


a heart not sweet but bleeding

by akisawana



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Eye Trauma, F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology, Flashbacks, Light Bondage, Night Terrors, Older Woman/Younger Man, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Under-negotiated Kink, d/s dynamics, i'm going to take this pool noodle and i will LAUNCH IT, no real spoilers, not my fault canon did it, oscar pine's brutal honesty, oscar's GODDAMN apology, remember when qrow was a teacher, ruby plays dirty pool, ruby rose's a+ team leading, sex with thundercracker -referenced, what happed to qrow's rings, yang is qrow's niece too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:49:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22657300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: Qrow has made and remade himself in her image, and so Maria cannot leave him to drown.(Alternatively, Qrow needs an adultier adult.)
Relationships: Qrow Branwen/Maria Calavera
Comments: 41
Kudos: 38
Collections: rubess





	1. subeme la radio

**Author's Note:**

> Note the first: This fic would not be possible without Aerie and Kath, who dragged it kicking and screaming out of me, dragged me kicking and screaming into posting it, and have now Learned Things that cannot be Unlearned. Te queiro no homo, todo.
> 
> Note the second: Unused tags for this fic include "no vomiting, i PROMISE," "a surprising lack of eye gore," and "james ironwood's very reasonable terror of a woman half his size and twice his age." I do promise no vomiting.
> 
> Note the third: I feel like i need to write an official apology letter, considering the direction this fic is going, just. Don't do any of this at home, kids.

Maria finds Qrow on the back stairs, the first night after the first new normal day, and for the first time she’s seen him since Argus he doesn’t have one child or another hanging off his shirttail. “Where are you going,” she asks him, half-afraid of the answer. Half knowing the answer.

“For a _drink_ ,” he spits, and his voice is rough with failure, with self-loathing, with things Maria knows the taste of very well indeed, and now she is afraid.

“Why?” she asks, with as much gentleness as she can manage. It’s not enough to cover a blade but it’s the best she can do.

“Because I’m a _drunk_ ,” he says, and it wakes ancient pain in her, deep and long-buried, wakes the memory of acceptance flowering into despair.

On the stairs, they are almost equal height and the weight of his sins bows his spine even further, allows her to reach up and take his head in her hands. Allows her to yank his face down to hers, so swift he can do no more than yelp. “Alcohol is a gift,” she tells him, thinking of dark glass bottles shining in the steady flame of an oil lamp. “It eases our pain, it brings joy.” A flask passed to the left around a campfire, bandaged hand to bandaged hand. The clink of thick glasses against each other after expensive victory. “It stiffens our courage and steadies our nerves.” Square bottle of whiskey warmed as it passed around, deosil always, trembling hands wiping the mouth. “It blunts our grief, allows us sleep untroubled.” Sweet wine, clear and bright as a lullaby, the bump of shoulders and blinking eyes. “But like all gifts, it must be used wisely.” A man alone in another room, framed by a doorway, wine bottle dangling from his fingers and nobody to catch.

Even this close, he avoids her eyes, his own cast down in shame.

She knows very well why he drinks.

“Why do you want a drink,” she asks, her fingers tight in his hair. His hands come up around her wrists, but he is not pulling her away, he is clinging to her. He is shaking his head, trying to escape even as he holds on fast as gravity, torn between the familiar and the necessary. He does not want a drink, or rather he does not want one as much as he wants to not want one.

“I’m _bored_ ,” he says, and she knows this is a lie. But she’s known him for a whole two weeks now and that’s as best as she’s going to get. It’s close enough to the truth. Qrow is drowning and he needs a raft, needs something he cannot name.

So she rises up on her toes, slips her arms around his neck, and kisses him.

A long time ago, when people were too smart to let monsters know their fathers' name, she knew a huntsman who called himself Thundercracker after his semblance, who could possibly give Qrow a run for his money in the depressed pigeon department, who used to swear by bed-hopping as the solution to, well. Most problems. It was a joke among her friends, _when in doubt, sex with Thundercracker_. It wasn’t nearly the cure-all Thundercracker swore it to be but… she doesn’t have a better idea and she needs to do something.

Qrow doesn’t hesitate, parts his lips under hers and lets her taste him thoroughly, slides his hands down to her waist and pulls her close, holds onto her hips like a lifeline. His mouth is sour and sickly-sweet and she swears she can taste blood. His fingers dig into her skin and he pulls her off balance, threatening to send them both tumbling down the stairs.

But when she pulls back, there is something like hope in his eyes, a soft desperate plea.

“Come with me,” Maria says, folding her hands around his, stepping backwards and tugging him along. He follows, trip-tripping up the stairs, their legs tangling together, feet knocking into ankles. “We’ll find something to do together.” And just so he’s very clear on what she intends to to do with him, at the top of the staircase she pulls him down to kiss him again, her hands on his shoulders, his neck, his face, her thumb running around the stubble-dusted line of his jaw.

Then she turns around -she’s not going to walk _backwards_ all the way -his arms wrapped around her, and leads him back to the room Ironwood gave her. Not personally; she’s yet to be in the same room as the General. She suspects he’s afraid of her. He should be.

Ironwood is a problem for later. Now, she is pushing Qrow to sit on her bed, where she can stand between his knees and reach him properly. He doesn’t need to be told not to touch her eyes and so she lets him roll her gloves off, allows him to press a kiss to each of her fingers before they’re at his shirt buttons and his mouth is on her neck, his hands working her shawl off.

“Hands on the headboard,” she orders once he’s free of his sleeves, since that’s quite enough for now, and Qrow grabs it quicker than sight, his back arching in the echo of a scythe-blade. She settles in his lap and runs her hands over his pale skin. “You really show every mark, don’t you? I doubt more than a third of these are from battle.” Under her palms, the muscles of his chest are hard and hot and heaving, outlined under skin stretched taut between scars. 

“What’s that supposed to mean,” he says, trying to find the insult, but good luck when it’s not there, when she’s circling a nipple with her nail.

“I’ve seen you fight,” she reminds him, drawing her fingers down his ribs. He is strung together with steel wire, humming-tense, and she thinks about how he flings that scythe around like it weighs nothing. “You’re too quick, too good to have this many scars.”

Qrow shrugs without lifting his hands, which does some very interesting things to the line of his shoulders. “I’ve taken a lot of escort missions,” he says, like that’s a defense. Like he needs a defense.

What has he done for Ozpin? Now is not a good time to ask. Probably _never_ is the right time to ask why he thinks he needs to throw himself bodily in front of blades and claws and she doesn’t even know what could have made that twisted white rope. So she slides her hands down his sides, finds the sharp jut of his hips. Leans forward and bites softly at his collarbone, tastes the salt of his skin. “And outside a fight, you’re careless,” she muses, half to herself. Drags down over his scarred chest, past the fresh dark line of a poisoned wound, presses a quick kiss to the soft skin of his belly before unzipping his pants. “Una cuchilla descuidada.”

“What’s that mean?” he asks, shifting as she draws down the rest of his clothing, settles between his knees. Trails her fingers up the silk-soft skin inside his thigh. His dick is smaller than she expected; not dramatically so, but she had assumed it would match his attitude.

Maria wraps careful fingers around his length, taking its measure. She can feel his heartbeat against her palm, feel it trigger the familiar electric rush of desire. “I met you on a bad day, didn’t I,” she says instead of answering his question, moving her hand up and down. Up and down. Now tight, now looser. Up, down. He makes a noise, and his head thumps against the pillow. Tighter, looser. Up and down and a little bit of a twist. Her other hand low, brushing over the dark wiry hair, finding his sac, cupping it in her palm and a sound beyond words torn from his throat. Up and down, twisting at the top and tighter on the downstroke, until he’s begging when he can catch his breath, pleading for something he cannot name.

He looks so good spread out in front of her, his broken voice going straight to her core, enough to warm her nearly dripping from sound and sight alone, from the hot heavy pulse echoed by her own. She pauses, lets go completely and stands up, and he whines high and needy, desperate, desperate.

“Don’t let go,” she orders, and she can _hear_ something crack as his grip tightens on the headboard. She strips quickly, there’s a skill you never lose, and settles back down on his lap, one hand guiding him inside her, sinking low and slow and when he moves to meet her halfway she half-snaps, “ _Don’t_ move.”

Qrow obeys.

Maria rocks in his lap, firmly doesn’t think about how long it’s been since she had some _one_ rather than some _thing_ inside her. She runs her hands up his body again, leaning forward and down until he’s drawn half-out and her mouth is on his skin again, until he is whimpering, shaking with the effort of doing what he’s told and it would be cruel to ask more of him. She sits up, his slide back inside easy with desire and easier with the sudden wave of tenderness for this man who’s trying so hard to be good. “Now you can move,” she says, her hips rolling and his move in counterpoint.

He doesn’t try to flip them over, lets her ride him, one hand on her waist and the other working between them to stroke his thumb over her clit. Someone has taught him well, and she leans back with her own hands on his thighs, doesn’t worry about him while she grinds out her pleasure with a gasp and a throbbing sweetness through her blood.

For a single turquoise moment, they are still. She catches her breath, looks down at him, and he is so pleased with himself, shy pride in the corners of his eyes without any smugness where he bit his lip. She leans forward, kisses it gently.

Then she gathers his wrists, one in each hand, pins them to his sides, and fucks him into the mattress until he’s crying and hoarse and spilling inside her, spine twisting as she wrings all she can manage out of him, fucks him until his hair sticks to his brow in sweaty slashes and his pulse hammers hard enough to see under his jaw.

When she lets his wrists up, his hands chase after hers, and so when she slides off him she does not leave but presses herself to his side, lets him fold his fingers around her palm. She absolutely _knew_ he’d be a cuddler, not that she’s complaining. 

“So,” she says, smiling up at him and he hasn’t known her long enough to see the warning tilt to her lips. “Does the Grim Reaper live up to your teenage fantasies?”

* * *

They still gather for breakfast, the nine of them who’ve seen so much, and Maria their tenth for sharing the final terrible secret. Ten, and yet in some ways still four and three and two and one; two teams, one old lady and she can see where once were the two men who knew where to go next, or where once was a kid in over his head and someone paying special attention to his safety. A bond that must have been great, once, for the chasm now to yawn so wide.

Or maybe Maria is just seeing what she wants to see, when Qrow responds to some siren she cannot hear and decides _now_ , before food, is when he should apologize to Oscar. Possibly to avoid explaining why he came out of Maria’s room so early. Like Oscar would have noticed, or questioned if he did.

“Look, farmboy. Oscar.” Qrow’s hand comes up behind his head. Maria wonders, irrelevantly, if all emo twinks have the same nervous tics. “I’m sorry. That I hit you.”

Oscar blinks at him slowly, like he doesn’t remember what Qrow’s talking about. “You punched Ozpin,” he says with a shrug. “I was just… collateral damage.”

“Doesn’t make it okay,” Qrow says with a shake of his head, and then it all pours out of him in a babbling rush, a dammed stream freed. “It wasn’t okay and I won’t do it again, I swear, I was having a bad day and that doesn’t _excuse_ it I just want you to know it won’t ever happen again, I don’t know how to prove it to you, I’m not saying you have to believe me but…” He runs out of steam mid-sentence, mostly because the sentence is longer than some headmasters’ tenures. “I don’t want you think I don’t regret it.”

Oscar squares his shoulders, looks up at Qrow, and Maria wonders what he was like before Ozpin was stuffed in his head. “It’s fine,” he says, even as his hand closes over the handle of the cane.

“It’s not fine,” Qrow says, looking down at his own hands. “I was supposed to _protect_ you. And then I hurt you.” He tugs the heavy ring off his finger with an audible pop, slides the other two off as well. “These don’t really have a meaning, not like some people’s. Just good for punching.”

“And because bandits don’t have bank accounts,” Oscar says with a smile for the top of Qrow’s head, since he’s avoiding Oscar’s eyes. “Ozpin told me.”

A chuckle escapes Qrow, like that’s an old private joke. “Yeah, yeah. Old habits die hard.” Then he holds them out to Oscar, flat on his palm, his face deadly serious. “Take them.”

“What?”

“Take them,” Qrow repeats, “throw them down the garbage disposal, use them for target practice, sell them for comic books, whatever. Just take them away from me.”

Oscar’s eyes search Qrow’s face, sliding side to side like he can read Qrow’s mind. Maybe he can, Maria knows more than one fairy tale about wizards with bird familiars. He closes his hand over the rings, over Qrow’s fingers.

“I should have promised to protect you,” Qrow says. “Instead I did the unforgivable. Take them, so I can’t do it again.”

Oscar steps back, the rings closed in his fist, his back straight and somehow he looks taller than Qrow right now. “You have my forgiveness,” he says, soft as a falling petal.

“I didn’t ask for it,” Qrow says, equally softly, and Maria stands silent witness.

“You have it anyways.” Oscar’s voice is firm, but not harsh. “I trust you won’t do it again.”

Maria could rescue Qrow from this, as his eyes dart around in search of an escape and maybe she should. Instead she leans on her cane and tries not to grin too widely. The world will not be kind to Oscar, if he makes a habit of granting mercy so easily. But who is she to stop him?

“I haven’t earned it,” Qrow protests, a little desperate and a lot bewildered. Arguing with a fourteen year old boy and losing.

Oscar shrugs. “Then you need to figure out how to, because I’m not taking it back.”


	2. despacito

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not easy. It's worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: Thank you Aerie for the Spanish, some of which may even be repeatable in polite company. 
> 
> Note the second: This is ... part of the reason I feel like I need to go on an apology tour. Just, please do not take the experiences of any character in here as representative of most people's. Some people, yes, but not most.

Maria didn’t intend for the first time to be the _first_ time, never intended it to be the start of a _thing_. But she found Qrow pacing the halls, hunched and hissing, and she couldn’t just leave him to drown in the shadows with his eyes fever-bright.

“I need a drink,” he tells her in place of a greeting, angry and low, like she’s going to argue. If ever a man needed a drink it is him, sweating and shaking when she takes his hand.

Instead, she asks, “For what?”

He closes his eyes, winces, his answer caught in his throat and only a wordless noise. She circles her thumb around the bone in his wrist, waits.

“I need,” he says, half to himself, “I need.” He doesn’t tell her what he needs.

Maria stands, patient and silent as the grave. Waits for him to find the words. Waits for his shoulders to drop, his head to fall, and she slides her palms up the bare skin of his arms, grabs his elbows lest he collapse entirely on top of her.

“It hurts,” he sighs, once he no longer can see her face. He turns his head on her shoulder, tucks his face against her neck. It takes some doing, to have his forehead pressed damp against her skin. He makes the effort.

She lays her cheek against the top of his head, and she does not know what to do.

Maria’s got a whole list of things _not_ to do, at least. It starts with _pulling away from him_ when he tentatively wraps his arms around her like he’s afraid she’ll falter under his weight. There’s _speaking meaningless platitudes to him,_ on the list, and _being honest_. Qrow’s too raw now for the truth, and that doesn’t mean she’ll lie to him, but there’s so many things she shouldn’t say she can’t think of what she should.

“I don’t _want_ to go to the bar,” he mumbles into her shawl, tucks the words safe and hidden under the folds. “I need to and I don’t want to.”

Oh, Maria is the wrong person for this. She is a pillar of salt by day, a column of flame by night, and Qrow is an open wound, a heart not sweet but bleeding. “What do you want me to do, put a leash on you?”

What part of her brain authorized _that_ to come out of her mouth?

Qrow sucks a breath in so hard, she knows she’s hit on something. Maria finds his hand and laces her fingers through his, pale stripes against her brown skin. “Keep you here,” she says. “Keep you from running off.”

She swears she feels him nod, and she continues.

“Take you back to my room, find something to distract you.” She means sex. She hopes he wants sex. She doesn’t know what else she can do to keep him with her, what else would be stronger than the cravings she has only ever known a distant echo of. “Keep you close.”

“Yes,” he groans, dragging himself away from the safety of her throat. His lip is caught between his teeth, she sees as he straightens, and his eyes are hazy.

“Te deseo,” she says, and he nods even though she knows he doesn’t understand, and she leads him by the hand to her room, his magnetism pulling at the very iron in her blood, the selfish half of the reason she wants to put him in her bed. She’s old, not dead.

As soon as the door closes he drops to one knee and kisses her, his hands reaching to free her hair. She goes for his belt, and she doesn’t think he even notices her unbuckling it, pulling it out of the loops, her fingers brushing over his cool skin.

Maria lets one end dangle on the floor, finds his hands, asks against his lips, “Do you want them in front of you or behind your back?” Feels the shudder running through his whole body at that.

Nearly misses him whispering, “Your call.”

That curls violet around the bottom of her ribcage, an emotion she can almost name shivering in her liver. It is one thing to have a lover place trust in her hands. It is something else, something additional for _Qrow_ to do so. Qrow who’s one of only two other scythe-wielders she’s ever known. Qrow who modelled his weapon after hers, modelled _himself_ after her, who speaks to her with awe peeking around the edges of his voice still. Maria could tell him to do _anything_ , she knows, and he would. Perhaps that should scare her, so much power over another, but it is only another thrill click-clacking down her bones electric blue.

Qrow mistakes her pause for something else and pleas tumble from his lips dark and syrupy as bruised plums. “I don’t know, I can’t trust myself.” His hands curl into themselves against hers. “I’m too weak, please, tell me what to do.” They go limp, so sudden she knows he’s doing it on purpose. “Don’t ask me what I want,” he says, barely more than a breath. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Behind your back, then, mi corazón,” she says as she moves around behind him, and she presses a kiss to his quicksilver pulse before buckling the old leather around his wrists tight and near-singing, “You can move,” she adds and he instantly shifts to sit back on his heels, his shoulders rolling back as she completes the circle, his head dropped when she stands in front of him again.

But when she lifts his face with a finger under his chin, there is no defeat in his eyes. Only relief.

“Don’t let me do anything I’ll regret,” he says, and somewhere in the mists of history three separate people are laughing themselves sick at the very concept of _Maria Calavera_ stopping someone from foolishness rather than _encouraging_ them.

The only irony is in his words, though; this is different from anything she has ever done before. And she’s never been one to aid in self-destruction. Other people’s self-destruction. The self-destruction of other people whom she likes. Maria is not going to let Qrow do anything he’ll regret.

“I won’t,” she says, running her thumb up the sharp line of his jaw. The pad of her thumb is becoming very familiar with his skin, the places soft and hidden and the workworn dryness, where the bones rise so close to the surface. He closes his eyes as she traces behind his ear, tips his head against her hand. “I won’t,” she says, tugging on the end of the belt, not enough to topple him, just enough for him to feel it.

He swallows, sharp against her hand.

Slowly, she brings her mouth to his neck, tastes the salt beading there. Slowly, she makes her way to the shell of his ear, still intimately acquainted with her hand. “I’m here, mi corazon,” she hums. “Don’t forget that.”

On his knees is a good place for Qrow, as Maria unbuttons his shirt with one hand, the belt still tight over her palm and a kiss placed on each bit of skin as it’s exposed, over the story written across his body in scars. “Stand up,” she tells him finally, stepping back. Leaving him to figure out how to stand on his own. Not too far back, because she won’t let him go.

He manages it in stages, up on his knees then one foot flat on the floor, both heels under him and then vertical in one balanced surge that makes her own knees ache with envy. “Not bad,” she allows, aiming for something that is neither infantilizing nor condescending, and she’s not sure she manages it but there are no complaints in his burning eyes. His pants hang dangerously low on his hips, his shirt is caught on his elbows, but those eyes are as clear as she’s ever seen them, focused on her with almost-frightening intensity.

Maria imagines him at her feet again, with that same fire in his eyes, waiting for her word and maybe if they’re both very very good she’ll have him there another night soon. If she asked, would he stay with only her word to hold him?

Qrow comes easily when she pulls on the belt, close and closer to her, and she kisses him again. Can’t go wrong with that, with running her free hand through his hair until there is something hard and hot pressing low against her. “Stay with me,” she says, half-breath, cupping the back of his skull like that’s going to protect him. Slipping her hand under his jaw and feeling his pulse there hammer-hard and hummingbird-fast. “Stay with me,” she says again.

Stay with her, even though he aches to be somewhere else, doing something else. Even though the only things keeping him here are shame and fear and weak leather. Stay with her and ride out the pain, the screaming of his spine and shaking of his hands. Stay with her and she’ll reach deep into her soul and find some way to keep him safe from himself. Grimm and terrorists and enormous Atlas military robots piloted by target-locked she-devils, not so much her forte anymore. But _himself_ , she should just about be able to manage.

Maria _must_ find a way, because who else is there?

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, and she hears what he means, hears _How do I make it stop?_

Well if she knew the answer, she wouldn’t make him jump through hoops for it. Her hand skims down his chest, runs down the line of his camino de leche, tucks under the top of his pants. “We’ll figure it out,” she murmurs, the backs of her fingers whispering across his skin, watching his breath stutter to a stop. His pants are so damn loose she doesn’t think she needs to pop the button to pull them off but she does anyways, avoiding his cock for now.

 _Distraction is key here,_ Maria remembers Thundercracker saying a lifetime ago. _Time’s the only cure but distraction will keep him from getting worse_. That had been grief, something lost beyond recovery. Not temptation. Well, neither Thundercracker nor the rest of his idiot team were any good at resisting temptation, and she certainly had to bail them out of the drunk tank and hide them from angry brothers enough times.

Still, it’s all she has to go on, the only clue she has, and when she looks up Qrow is looking down at her like she has all the answers, when in all her long life she has never seen _this_. She falls back on old standbys, baffling with bullshit where she can’t dazzle with brilliance. “Te ves como para comerte,” she says, because he won’t understand it and so can take from it whatever meaning he needs.

His eyes close, and when they open again, they are dark with want, with need. Qrow licks his lips, a nervous dart of his tongue. He does not speak. She does not know if he can speak.

“Should I keep ahold of this or tie you off,” she muses aloud. Both ideas have merits, but as she leads him towards the bed she decides she wants both hands on his body. He comes eagerly; even naked, bound and trembling, he moves as a hunter, muscles shifting like a jaguar. Without pants that does some real interesting things to his ass Maria hates to miss, things she imagines for a brief second, almost distracted by the task at hand. Maybe next time, if there is one.

And that’s it, that’s the answer. The next time and the next, because this won’t be over in a single night. Distraction, keep him too busy until time quiets it down.

The thought lurks in the back of her skull that perhaps he’s broken beyond repair. That he’ll have to learn like she did, a new normal so much different than everyone else’s. And under everything, the second-guessing, the lingering doubt, the possibility that she’s just telling herself what she wants to hear, that she’s trying to absolve herself of taking advantage.

He’s a grown-ass man, she reminds herself firmly, tying the other end of the belt around the headboard. And she can do this, she can keep him out of the bottle for a night. A second, if he comes to her again. Step by step, night by night, until he’s found some other way to bandage what’s scraped raw and bleeding, something else to wrap it tight and hide it safe to heal.

* * *

“Uncle Qrow!”

Maria quite sensibly gets the hell out of the way before Ruby impacts her uncle at approximately three times the speed of sound. This must be a regular thing, since all Qrow does is brace his feet and try to hide his wince. “You guys back already, kiddo?” he asks, like he hasn’t been pacing for the last twenty minutes, waiting for Ruby and Oscar to return.

He needs a hobby, not that Maria’s got room to talk, since hers appears to be following Qrow around and silently appreciating all the work he’s putting into sobriety. And his ass. It is a _fantastic_ ass and it should be appreciated. She still needs a new hobby.

Ruby nods, pushes her hair out of her face. “And I got you a present!” She thrusts a bag at him, beaming.

Qrow makes a strangled noise in his throat Maria doesn’t bother to analyze because she can only handle so much melodrama and Oscar has finally caught up. She might need to save her patience for Oscar and Qrow in the same room and the fallout of that. 

The present Qrow unwraps is a plastic bottle, red Maria thinks, Pietro hasn’t quite gotten her eyes to show true color yet. There’s a winged eye drawn on it with fine black marker, the iris a gear. “It’s a water bottle,” Ruby chirps. “So you can keep drinking without … you know … _drinking_ , and then you won’t get dehydrated and need to be scraped up off the floor again!”

“Is that a regular thing?” Oscar asks softly, looking at Maria like she knows the answer. She does not know the answer.

_(I’ve never seen him this bad.)_

“Uh, thanks, Ruby,” Qrow says, tracing the black symbol with his finger. Maria realizes she’s seen that eye before, on Qrow’s flask. That there is ink on Ruby’s hand. Yep. She can smell the fallout.

“And, you know, sometimes you grab your flask when you need a minute to think of what to say, so it’s probably better if you only try to break one bad habit at a time,” Ruby continues. Maria decided days ago that _clearly_ Ruby is his daughter, not by blood but by adoption after her mother died. How Yang fits in she doesn’t know, but the family resemblance is too strong to deny. Especially now, as Ruby trips over her own tongue, trying to call him an idiot without actually saying the words.

“It would be for the best if you did not say the first thing that pops in your head to the man who commands Atlas’ army,” Oscar says, so casual and careful Maria would bet it’s rehearsed. Then again, this is _Oscar_ , so perhaps it’s only fifty-fifty.

“Hey now,” Qrow says, his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Ironwood and I go way back, if he was going to shoot me he would have done it a long time ago.”

“You asked Yang if she was lying or crazy,” Ruby says, flatly. “Let’s not test that.”

Well. That explains why Yang doesn’t talk to him, as far as Maria can tell.

“You _what?”_ Oscar’s voice cracks, all teenage boy, no impossibly-ancient wizard, and he looks at Maria like she has anything to do with this.

“After she broke Mercury’s leg on national television,” Ruby confirms. Qrow has his hand over his eyes like if he can’t see them they can’t see them.

Maria has only a vague recollection of someone getting hurt in the Vytal festival she didn’t watch. Well, Mercury probably deserved it.

“You did _what_?” Oscar’s voice goes, impossibly, higher. “I cannot believe you, you, _killdeer_.”

That’s just harsh, calling him a killdeer, the legendarily dumbest bird. “Farmboy, I didn’t _know_ about Emerald’s semblance, what would you have thought-”

“What sort of huntsman has never heard of an illusion semblance being used to embarrass someone, that’s like a third of the episodes on any given Saturday morning cartoon! What were you doing on Saturday mornings?”

Maria expects Ruby to say _nursing a hangover_ , but her silver eyes are shining when she says, “Grading papers, usually.”

“You were a _teacher_?” Oscar squeaks. Then he looks at Ruby, despair thick on his face and thicker in his voice. “We are all going to die, to comic book villain tactics.”

“They usually get defeated by friendship,” Ruby points out. “So as long as we stick together, we’ll be okay.”

Maria meets Qrow’s eyes over the children’s heads. A teacher. She can’t see it, but she wants to.

* * *

Maria swallows her scream because if they hear her they’ll find her, finish what they started and she’ll never even know _why._ She’s shaking in the dark, and there is someone in the room with her, she can hear _breathing_ and she can do nothing but draw her knees up and _shake_.

“Maria?” Qrow asks, gravelly-familiar, his hand on hers so slowly it doesn’t occur to her to flinch. She is frozen, she could not move away from him if she wanted to, cannot move towards him. She cannot breathe, her lungs burning-dry but maybe if she is very small and very still and very silent she will be safe.

Next to her, Qrow shifts, slides his arm around, gently tugs her against his bare chest. It comes back to her in drops slow and thick as honey. Atlas Academy, and she was surprised they had sweatpants small enough for her to sleep in. Qrow’s shirt, he would be wearing one to match hers but he dumped most of a cup of decaf down the front. Claimed it was his semblance and she argued he just wasn’t paying attention.

Atlas Academy, maybe the safest place on the planet right now, and they can’t get her here, they’d have to get through all the security a paranoid control-freak could design. Could they?

“Are you with me,” Qrow murmurs, gentle as a scalpel against numbed skin.

Maria tries to speak, discovers she cannot force the words past a body still convinced of silence’s safety. Does not know what those words would be. Settles for nodding.

“Okay.” He wraps his arms around her, holds her close, broad shoulders between her and the door. Between her and anyone who might come through the door.

_Congratulations, Maria Calavera. You’ve become the eighty-fifth person to use him as a human shield._

Shame shrinks her bones, makes her loose and uncertain inside her own skin, and she is not too fearful to feel it but sure as hell too afraid to do something about it.

“Do you want me to grab your stick?” he asks, and she shakes her head, shakes harder in his arms. Leans against him and he understands, pulls the blanket up over her shoulders, and when she ducks her head low he just flips the whole thing over them both.

They are in a cave, dark and blue and quickly getting hot. She can smell his sweat, her own staleness, thick in her nose, thick enough to blot out the memory of her own blood. Every breath is moist and sharp against Qrow’s skin, and she cannot bear to meet his eyes.

Maria cannot bear to touch her own, to remind herself they are _gone_.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Qrow moves one hand in slow strokes down her arm. He’s good at this. _Practiced_ at this.

“If talking about it helped,” she says, small and broken, her voice almost unrecognizable even to herself, “I’d have stopped doing this twenty years ago.”

Maria had tried, years ago, tried everything they said would work. Talking to a _professional_ , reliving it over and over and over and it never hurt less. Little white pills every day that did nothing, yellow ones that numbed her to everything while it played behind her -hah- eyelids. Different ones, again and again, and nothing helped. Tried everything, did everything she was told, listened to everything they said would fix it.

And when none of it did, the doctors and the therapists and her friends, they told her it was her fault, that she just wasn’t trying hard enough. Gave up on her, because that was easier than admitting there was nothing _they_ could do, that she was broken beyond their skill to repair.

Or maybe they were right. Maybe she was just too weak and lazy.

Maria reaches up and pulls the blanket off, no point in making Qrow suffer too when he could have air sweet and cool. Cold even, like it had been in her lungs, like it will always be in the bottom of her lungs. 

He stops stroking her arm, rearranges the blanket around her shoulders, doesn’t suggest she go back to sleep. Smart man. She can hear his heart, steady in his chest, feel his lips against her hair. He finds her hand, folds her fingers into her palm. He starts to hum, a song Maria doesn’t recognize, something that spins out low and low and moonlit-silver.

At some point she must fall asleep, because there’s no way he holds her for hours, until the alarm on his scroll goes off and he must drag himself away from her, must leave to do what she should be doing, what she could not bring herself to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Meme dump!](https://imgur.com/a/XHx05qd)


	3. mil problemas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qrow makes it six whole days before Maria finds him in the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: this is the chapter with relapsing into alcoholism and self-medication. Take care of yourselves.
> 
> Note the second: As much as it makes my accuracy-loving heart _cringe,_ I left out all the bodily fluids. You're welcome, [redacted]. 
> 
> Note the third: thank you once more to Aerie for all you have done.

Qrow is, of course, at the third-closest bar to campus, first one that’s grey and sufficiently dark. Maria’s feet stick to the floor with every step as she makes her way to the counter where Qrow sits hunched over a glass. He takes one look at her and knocks back the rest of his drink, a grim determination on his face.

“Don’t quit on my account.” She perches on the stool next to him. The vinyl is slick and she hopes her balance doesn’t look as precarious as it _is_ because she is one wrong move from sliding to that disgusting floor and that is not the image she wants to project.

Qrow glares at her out of the corner of his eye. She ignores it, waves the bartender over to order a cola. Qrow manages to order another of whatever he’s drinking without actually saying a word. She thinks it's whiskey, mostly because Qrow is a walking stereotype.

They wait for the bartender to return in silence, a bubble of stillness in this place full of people young enough to be their children. Kids who haven’t seen what they’ve seen, who don’t really know all the reasons people gather in the dark, not alone but with plenty of plausible deniability.

Their drinks come, and they drink in silence. If Maria had something to say to him, she would, but she’s got nothing. She’s not here to lecture him, to berate him, to drag him out by his ear. She’s not here to ask him why _he’s_ here, what was the final straw, how he could throw everything away. How he’s planning to look his nieces in the eye tomorrow. How he’s planning to look at himself in the mirror tomorrow. Maria is just here to make sure he is _there_ tomorrow.

Maria’s not very good at patience at the best of times, which this is most certainly not, and she knows that. But she knows she can be petty and cruel. This is cruel, watching him drink, watching the line of his throat as he swallows again and again, unblinking witness to his failure as he methodically gets drunk in front of her. This is petty, saying nothing, offering no comfort, no protest, just pointedly sucking down her soda, crunching the ice when it’s empty. Ordering another one.

She wonders what lizards he’s scraping off the ceiling of his mind. Wonders if there’s another way to get them off besides this, a hard reset of brain chemistry. There’s no shame in the concept; plenty of hunters need that. Plenty of _people_ carry around little white pills in their pockets, crack yellow circles in half with their thumbnails, keep orange ovals in orange bottles on their nightstands, breakfast of champions, alarms set at night, whenever they need to take the edge off. No shame and worth a try. Plenty of people, too, nothing helps; Maria’s one of them.

And that group doesn’t have a whole lot of half-functional alcoholics, she’s noticed.

But he’s a grown-ass man and she doesn’t know his history or the state of his kidneys, and anyways she’s sure it’s something he’s heard before. She’s not going to repeat things he’s heard a million times. Things she heard a million times and never believed true until she lived them, and all the nagging in the world didn’t speed it up. So she sits and drinks soda because alcohol has never helped her, and waits for him to figure it out.

Qrow stops of his own accord, eventually, stands and sways and drops some money on the counter before staggering towards the door. She follows him, careful over the dirty floor, and only once they are outside with salt crunching under their feet does he speak.

“Happy now?” he slurs.

“It’s three degrees out,” she informs him, poking him in the leg with her cane. “Start walking.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, and she feels the flick of his aura keeping him warm against her own. “I’ll be happy when you’re back inside.”

It’s a cold walk back to campus, made colder by his refusal to look at her. They run into three different patrols, two who don’t look twice assuming she’s a harmless old lady, _pendejos_. The third asks _is everything alright ma’am_ _is this man bothering you_ before waving her on. Qrow scowls at their backs so hard he doesn’t notice the icy patch of sidewalk between the golden pools of streetlights, trips over it and goes down in a heap.

Maria stops and leans on her stick and waits for him to collect himself. He stays sprawled on the ground for a minute, like he’s debating just sleeping there until dawn, in the _literal gutter_. Surely not waiting for her to leave him. She isn’t leaving him.

When he finally rises to his feet, there is something like hate deep in his eyes but it’s not for her.

They make their slow staggering way back to the academy, through the side door and the back halls, Qrow trailing melted snow from his fall and Maria following him, waiting when he stops and turns, leans his head against the wall and just stands there for a long minute before continuing on. Back to the spare teacher room Ironwood had given Qrow, near enough to his flock of children to keep him happy. Far enough away they won’t see him like this.

It takes four tries for him to punch the code into the lock, glaring at her after each failure like it’s the one that will make her give up on him.

Inside he doesn’t reach for the light and she doesn’t need it to see him lean his weapon carefully against the wall, just in case, drag himself toward the bed. “Get those wet pants off,” she snaps, before he can drop on top of it. “Were you raised by beowolves?”

“Bandits and bartenders,” he snarks back, but when she’s come back from the little bathroom he’s thrown them in the corner.

“Drink.” She shoves the glass into his hands, forces him to take it or wear it, then turns the blankets down properly. Idiot. Did he think suffering after the fact would somehow undo what he’d done?

Probably.

Then she turns around and stares up at him until he lifts the glass and chugs the water so fast she fears he’ll make himself sick. How good is his night vision, she wonders, then decides it doesn’t matter when he’s this drunk and takes the empty tumbler from him before he can drop it.

“Say it,” he says, as she slides the glass onto the nightstand, as she ignores his trembling hands. “I know you want to.”

“Say what?” she asks, stripping out of her own damp outer layer, looking around to see if there’s a chair in the room besides the fancy metal screw shoved against the desk. No such luck, it’ll have to do.

“That I’m a disappointment. Just like _you_ ,” he adds, with more spite than the situation really calls for.

Maria maneuvers the chair around him, pulls herself up in it, lays her cane across her knees and kicks her shoes off.

“Are we waiting until morning then, for you to read me the riot act? Because I’d rather do it drunk than hungover, if it’s all the same to you.” He doesn’t sit on the bed so much as collapse in its direction and land mostly-upright.

Qrow’s a hot fucking mess, bad as she’s seen anyone, barely a week out of Argus and already back to old habits, and she doesn’t even know what or why pushed him back down, how it even started. Doesn’t know how anyone could have ever trusted him, with secrets or daughters. Doesn’t know why anyone would keep him around, everything falling apart around their heads and him wandering off to the bar the second they take their eyes off him, more trouble than he’s shown himself worth. He’d deserve it, if they left him behind, let him drink himself to death if that’s what he’s so determined to do.

But those thoughts belong to another world, one with justice and ironclad truths, and other things Maria left among the wreckage of a train, buried under pine needles and snow and soft blue light.

“Just do it already,” Qrow pleads, his eyes shining in the dimness. “Just leave me. Just. Stop dragging it _out_.”

Did Salem think she was the only woman to ever bury a lover?

Next to her, Qrow finally slumps to the side, draws his legs up, curls under the blankets like a child. “I won’t leave you,” she says, finding she can reach him without stretching too far, she can run her fingers through his hair without fear of falling over. Not a child, she corrects herself, but a man who’s seen too much and carried too much, buckled and broke under the weight. Who they had to carry, still are carrying, and maybe he earned it from some of them, from his nieces perhaps, but Maria and the others has to take it on faith that he’s worth it.

If they are truly alone in this world, if all she will ever have is what she makes with her own two hands, Maria will make something good. And if she only has it in her to save one more person, let it be _him_ , who made and remade himself in her image.

(Maria has spent too long in Mistral to not know what _Branwen_ means.)

“It’s what I deserve,” he says, and he uses that word so much, what does he _think_ it means? He’s Ozpin’s son, same as Ruby’s his daughter, and like Ozpin he’s so convinced he’s committed an unforgivable sin. So convinced that he’s already damned and there’s no reason to avoid it twice.

Fuck this chair.

Maria pushes him over, makes room for herself on the bed, lays down next to him and draws his head to her breast. “It is,” she agrees, because that’s an argument she won’t win and he might be right anyways. “I won’t leave you, mi corazón.”

* * *

Morning, and it’s obvious to anyone who has eyes to see what Qrow did last night, how hungover he is by the way he’s squinting in the light. Obvious to Weiss, betrayal and resignation in the lines of her mouth. Obvious to Blake, who switches her chair, puts her own body in front of Oscar. Obvious to Jaune and Nora and Ren who have a silent conversation before surrounding Oscar, Ren’s hand on Blake’s shoulder in support. Obvious to Ruby, disappointment making her hands small and tight around the mug she searches for answers. Obvious to Yang, whose eyes burn on her uncle’s back when he stomps out of the room.

Maria mutters several uncomplementary words under her breath as she follows him, though she doesn’t know how to arrest his slide, how to make him understand that one bad night is not the end of the world. He made it six days. If he _tries_ , maybe next time will be eight. Maybe next time will be four. If he _tries_ and doesn’t decide the sobriety experiment is over. She doesn’t know how to make him _understand_ , doesn’t know how to keep him from giving up on himself.

She doesn’t expect Yang to chase her down, cold metal fingers tight on her shoulder, turning her around. She _really_ does not expect Yang to hiss at her, low and colder than metal could ever be, “Leave him _alone_.”

Maria turns, folds her hands over the head of her cane to keep from slapping Yang’s hand away. She’s not going to just _leave_ Qrow to stew in his own failure, not when she promised. She’s not going to quit when it gets hard. For once.

“He’s _fine_.” Yang’s eyes flick up over Maria’s head, checking before she continues. “It’s not a problem, he’ll pull it together when we need him. He always does.”

“Really.”

Color rises in Yang’s cheeks, in her eyes. “Yes, really, the farm doesn’t count! That was the Apathy, that hit everyone! You can’t keep beating him over the head with that and letting the rest of us off!”

Maria thinks about Oscar missing and Qrow not answering his phone, finding Qrow passed out and draped over their hostesses’ porch. Thinks about Yang’s voice quiet as she said _I’ve never seen him this bad,_ the only words about her uncle Maria’s heard her utter. They were nowhere near any Grimm then.

She’s never even seen Yang _speak_ to him.

“He’s fine just how he is, okay, don’t try to change him! He’s not perfect but who is, _you?_ ”

And there’s the family resemblance.

“He’s never let me down,” she says, and Maria hears the now-familiar quiet thunk of Qrow’s head against the wall, around the corner, realizes that Qrow can hear every word they’re saying. “I’d rather have him here than _anyone_ else, I wouldn’t trade him for my _mother_. For _either_ of my mothers.”

Yeah, Maria has no idea what that means. But there are tears in Yang’s eyes when she admits that, like she’s betraying someone by saying that, or maybe like it’s something she should have said years ago.

“Just leave him alone,” Yang pleads. “About this at least. He’s not a pizza, you can’t pick up the bits you don’t like. He’s worth it, I know you haven’t seen it but he _is_.”

“I’m sure he is, carnalita,” Maria says, because Yang is _his_ if not Maria’s own, and she makes herself be gentle. “You wouldn’t put up with this if he wasn’t. I don’t think you’re the kind of woman who suffers fools gladly.” She reaches into her pocket where she still keeps the most important thing huntswomen carry, a bottle of ibuprofen. “I just wanted to offer him some of this.”

“Oh,” Yang says, her voice small. “Sorry.”

Maria fights down the urge to laugh, lest Yang think she’s laughing at _her_. “Don’t ever apologize for love,” she tells Yang, pressing the bottle into her hand. She knows what Qrow needs now, and it’s nothing Maria can give. “Why don’t you take them to him?”

Yang hesitates and there is a whole saga written in that pause, but she takes them. Maria keeps looking up at Yang, unblinking, waiting to see if she’ll explain why she won’t talk to Qrow. She doesn’t think it’s because he called her crazy. She doesn’t think Yang wants to tell _anyone_ , but for all Maria is too old to give a damn about social norms anymore, she’s still perfectly capable of weaponizing them. 

Yang doesn’t explain; whatever the reason she'd rather take the out than put into words what's built up between her and the uncle she, apparently, trusts to come through in the clutch. Instead Yang just says, “Okay. Okay, yeah. I will. Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Meme dump!](https://imgur.com/a/NmndO97)


	4. cuchillos reverentes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fall down seven times, get up eight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: Thank you Aerie for the beta, the Spanish, and the title
> 
> Note the second: this entire fic is basically justification for this one scene.
> 
> Note the third: unused tags include "sorry [redacted] it's basically pet play," "warning: thinking about one's mother during sex," and "ozpin makes poor life choices," the last entirely because Ozpin's poor life choices do not show up enough to not disappoint anyone clicking on this looking for them. Ozpin makes the worst life choices.

She finds him at the foot of the stairs, pacing, waiting for her, and the hope lighting up his eyes when he sees her coming for him makes her question every word she’s ever said to him. Didn’t he understand, when she said _come to me_ , when she promised him _any night_ , she meant it? What part wasn’t clear?

“I’m not going to come looking for you every night,” Maria tells him. “Learn to knock.” Qrow looks away, face open and pained and soft, and she reaches for his hand. “I won’t turn you away.”

His eyes widen, surprise and hope and the disbelief of a man steeling himself for the inevitable, the desperate hunger of a man who’s never quite sure there will be a next time, and Maria kind of wants to track down everyone who’s ever hurt him, shoot their kneecaps out, and stake them out for grimm. 

Instead, she leans on him as they walk back to her room, passing Oscar on the way who wishes them a good night. Well, he wishes Maria a good night, and calls Qrow a white-breasted nuthatch, which is specific enough that Maria has to ask.

Qrow shakes his head. “They saw a penguin, earlier, and Weiss said that she could see them out her bedroom window, and then Yang told them about the birds she could see from _her_ window. Oscar went to grab a book because he thought that what Yang called a robin was absolutely nothing like the robins from where _he_ grew up and that I wasn’t going to be an impartial referee. By the time he came back...Blake had decided I don’t look like a crow.”

Maria snorts, punching the code into her door. “My mother kept birds. Hawks and falcons, mostly, but the neighbors would bring her anything with wings that needed help. Including our local _grey_ crows.” She doesn’t tell him about counting crows on a fence or a treetop, one for sorrow two for joy. Not when they’ve not seen another one since reaching Argus. “Black hoods, black legs, but.” She pokes him in the chest. “Grey bodies, darker on the breast.”

Qrow just stands in the hallway, and really. Ozpin left _him_ in charge?

“They’re good kids, but they don’t know nearly as much as they think. Now get inside before…” She pauses; there aren’t any bugs to fly in.

“Someone sees me?” he finishes, of course, does he _ever_ pass up a chance to indulge in self-loathing?

“Before every insect on the continent joins us,” she snaps. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s better than what he said. “I’ll show you off when someone’s actually looking.”

He slinks in after her, and as soon as the door is shut he’s on his knees, hands behind his back. Maria sighs, steps closer to him, lays her hand against his cheek, and he leans into it, eyes half-closed, stubble rough against her palm. “We don’t have to,” she says, quietly. “If you don’t want to, we can find something else to do.”

“Please,” he says against her palm. “I’m so tired of...I need it.”

That’s bullshit.

“I want,” he corrects himself. “Please.”

Maria runs her fingers through his hair before she walks away. “I found something better than your belt,” she says, opening the bag on her desk. Inside is a pair of small coils of leather, light and soft, two fingers wide. It only took her a few hours to find them; she’s surprised she could find them at all. She brings them over to Qrow, offers them to him, but he doesn’t move to take them. Trusts her.

“Proper leashes,” is all he says, but he sounds pleased.

“No.” She walks around behind him, unrolling one. “These are _jesses_.”

“What’s the difference?” He offers up a wrist, sliding it up his own spine, and she makes a loop with the jess, the end through the slit, the loop over his hand, before she pulls it tight, not too tight, secures it. 

“Jesses are shorter,” she says to the back of his neck. “They keep the bird close, keep it safe. And when someone’s holding them, the bird can’t fly off.” The other wrist is trickier, already wrapped in leather, harder to tell if it’s pinching his skin. Jesses need to be light, light as they can be.

“Better control,” Qrow says, voice soft, slipping towards calm.

“No,” she says, unrolling the ends, winding them around her fingers like her mother showed her so long ago. Surely her mother never imagined she would be putting them on a _man_. “Birds can’t be controlled, not if you want to let them fly. You always have to let them go and hope you’ve earned their return.” She runs her nails down the back of his neck, kisses away the shiver. “Jesses keep the bird from flying off when he shouldn’t. From doing something idiotic he’ll regret later.”

Maria stands in front of him, jesses firm in her hand. “Jesses are a promise,” she says, and now she’s just making shit up but she thinks it’s what he wants to hear. She’s making shit up about her mother’s birds but for her crow it’s true. “To keep the bird where he belongs. To take care of him.” She leans close, forehead to forehead, and she can feel his breath on her face slow and sweet and if the trust is heady then the peace in his eyes, the peace she put there is _intoxicating_. Maybe not the best word, under the circumstances, but she’s using it. “It’s not control. It’s faith.”

He shudders at that, down to his toes, and she cups his face in her hands. “Yo te cuido, me ocuparé de ti,” she says against his mouth, like her mother used to murmur into leather hoods.

His lips part but he says nothing, only swallows her words, her promise, belief so strong she feels like she’s actually capable of it.

Maria lets her hands slide around him, holds him close. “Aquí me tienes, estoy aquí,” she reminds him, as he buries his face in her neck, as she follows the line of his spine with her palms. He’s so thin under her hands, reminds her of her mother’s birds, deadly killing machines but so fragile, so light.

Then he’s kissing her skin, mouthing his way up, silent begging in how he presses himself against her, a tinge of desperation she’s not sure if she trusts, the heady power turning to cold fear. “We don’t have to,” she repeats to him, in words he’ll understand. “These-” and she tugs at the jesses, “don’t mean you have to take your pants off.”

“Please,” he says, voice hoarse, skin fever-hot through their clothes. “Please don’t tie me up and leave me to _think_ , just give me a damn drink if that’s what you’re going to do, don’t just leave me like this.”

Maria steps back, eyes narrowing. “We could put on the television,” she says. “Watch Musical Chairs.”

Qrow moans at that, wordless and desperate. “Message recieved,” he says, “I understand, full consent, please, just fuck me, _please_ ,” he begs. His eyes are pressed shut, wrinkles appearing at the corner of his eyes, and Maria reaches out, tries to smooth them out with a thumb.

“We can find something else, if it’s a distraction you’re after,” she says. He came in her room and dropped to his knees without a word. Let her tie him up with something he couldn’t tell from a choke-collar. And she needs to know he knows. Needs to know she’s not using him. “You don’t have to settle.”

He turns his head into her palm again, mirror of before, and his eyes open, dark and deep and fixed on the floor. “I want you,” he says, “so damn badly, I want you to touch me, I want-” He cuts himself off with an angry noise, like he’s said too much, like he’s asking too much. Like he’s learned to mistrust _what do you want_.

Maria presses her lips together, fear tucking itself small and cold and insistent under her collarbone. Considers him for a moment. She’s never actually _had_ jesses slack in her hand and a man unhesitantly laying everything he is at her feet. It steals up on her, steals her breath away, how badly she could hurt him, even without drawing blood.

And if he found forgiveness in that, she would. Only if that’s how he could forgive himself.

She tightens her fingers on his face, tips it up to meet her mechanical gaze. “Don’t let me do something I’ll regret later,” she tells him, refuses to let him look away. She’ll take his faith and his trust but she won’t make him helpless. Won’t let him make himself helpless.

Qrow’s eyes go wide, like he hadn’t considered that. Hadn’t considered that she’s trusting him as much as he’s trusting her, to know his own limits. To be honest. To not please her at any cost.

He could make her into a monster.

“I want it all,” he says, voice rough and low and too strained to be a lie. “I want you to take me, tie me up, make me forget my name, make me scream yours,” and his eyes are burning, desperate fire melting away the fear that this was too easy, that he’s too perfectly submissive. That perhaps he was merely pretending. “I want you to take care of me because I fucking _can’t_ ,” rips out of him, admission to himself as much as to her, scraping across some half-healed wound.

“Mi corazón,” she says, kisses him hard and deep and she swears she can taste the blood that was in his voice. Holds him close with the jesses, close as he wants to be, pulls them tight as her faith in him _meaning it_ when he said he wants it all. “You’re okay, you’re okay.” Not _estás bien_ because she wants him to understand her, know she’ll take care of him. Wants him to know that what she offered and he accepted she’ll _give_ him. “You’re okay.”

Qrow kisses her back, desperate, trying to cling to her with his hands behind his back still. Shaking, folding in on himself, and she has to tug sharpish to get him to stand up, half-drag him to the bed, undoing his buttons as they go. With two jesses she can pull it off, let go of first one and then the other for the shirt to fall to the floor. She looks him up and down and damn, he’s so think she’s half-tempted to send him to a doctor; she’s not one but those bones can’t be healthy. The only thing that stops her is the thought of telling him that she can’t help him, mere minutes after promising to take care of him, after he placed trust in her hands light and fragile as a feather, as a bird’s bone. 

She’ll just, she doesn’t know, start feeding him more. Her mother did that for her birds, too, brought them food when she couldn’t let them hunt for whatever reason. Maria helped her, and her father, holding the jesses while her mother let them eat out of her hands.

“Pants,” she tell him to cover for her pause, because she’s seen how he uses any moment of quiet to start up the self-loathing train, and there’s a few things on her to-do list above breaking him of that habit. Then, their clothes discarded on the floor together, she lays him out on the bed, pillows arranged just _so_ to take most of his weight even with his arms stretched above his head. Qrow’s too far gone to find forgiveness in pain, only justice, and Maria is not here for justice but for mercy.

Maria sits back on her heels in front of him, considers his body, one hand on his chest to feel his breath. Traces down between two ribs, tries not to think about how deep the hollow between them is. Is he using the bottle Ruby bought him? She can’t tell. Down his side, back up the center of his chest, slow and steady and his damn eyes on her again.

She catches his gaze, doesn’t let it go as she presses her mouth to his skin, traces over the line of a scar with her tongue, kisses from the sharp corner to the curve of his waist. He doesn’t taste sick, exactly, not ill but close to it. Maria noses down his camino de leche, to where she remembers there’s another scar knotted inside his thigh, might as well bounce from old roughness to still-red line. Qrow smells like recovery after a deep and dangerous wound, victory hard-won and a long time healing before he’s ready for the next fight, maybe longer than the world’s got.

If she only saves one more person, it will be him, because anyone else would need more than she has left. She can save one more person if that person is Qrow, half-there already. 

Underneath her mouth he is pressing as close to her as he can, up into her hands that never stop moving, trying to meet her mouth sliding over his skin. He’s half-hard but they have all night and she’s far more interested in the muscles stretched over his chest, thick enough to swing that enormous weapon because of course he wouldn’t think to put gravity Dust in it.

It works for him, she supposes, easing one leg over his body, biting softy at his collarbone. Maria’s very fond of the dip in the middle and she spends a long time there with her tongue against his pulse, learning that bit of skin as well as any part of her own body.

“Please,” he moans, head thrown back and the line of his throat a scythe’s curve. “Please, Maria. _Please_.”

“What?” she asks against his skin, against the soft dark hair lining his jaw. “I’m not a mind-reader, mi corazón,” she adds when she makes it all the way up to his ear without further words from him.

“Please,” he says again, then devolves into a string of curses as she tests how sensitive the softness that is not quite his head and not quite his neck is. If he can’t tell her what he wants, she can at least give him what he likes. “Please,” he says when she takes pity on him and sits back, looking down at him. “Please, let me taste you,” he begs.

Well, Maria supposes he ought to be an active participant in this. So she slides forward, knees on either side of his face, and he doesn’t need any further instruction to bend his head close, press his mouth against her entrance and lick up inside. Maria gasps at the press of his tongue, hot and wet making her hotter and wetter, and she has to grab the headboard with one hand to keep from falling over entirely.

The other one she winds through his hair, murmuring half-coherent praise as he does something with his lips that has her clenching around nothing, has her swallowing down a shout, too overwhelmed by his mouth and the scrape of stubble against the inside of her leg to do more than twist her fingers and try not to tug too hard. Her blood is sparkling, pleasure sparking under her skin like broken aura, but her awareness has narrowed down to the hand in his hair and his tongue inside her, his tongue pressed against her clit throbbing and he’s saying something muffled by her body, casting some spell that has her crying out and shuddering against his face, thighs trembling around his head.

When she looks down, Qrow’s eyes are shining bright and pleased, and they stay that way while she slides down his body to return the favor. His gaze is still gentle on her skin when she leaves to clean up, waiting for her when she returns to wipe him off in turn. Only when she unties the jesses from the headboard do his eyes close, a slow sleepy blink as she rubs his shoulders, easing the rush as he can move them once more.

Maria wraps the jesses around her hand, holds him close as he sips from the red water bottle she fills for him, as they flip through television channels to find some baking contest. Holds him close as he drifts off at her back, curling like a burning leaf.

In the morning, she winds the jesses once more, tucks them in a drawer next to a pair of sweatpants far too long for her legs, and a t-shirt that still has the faint outline of a coffee stain on it.

* * *

When Maria wakes up, there is darkness. Not the dimness of an unlit room, but pure black surrounding her, pressing down, and this is it this is the day her eyes didn’t turn on and she’s helpless without them can’t see a damn thing can’t see people coming will this be the day her preflexes fail too? How can she respond to the slightest hint of something wrong when she can’t even _see_?

“Maria?” Qrow’s voice is ... to her right, and she reaches out, digs her fingers into the first part of his body she makes contact with. She thinks it’s his arm but does she _know_? How can she know?

“Maria?” Qrow’s hand on her cheek, and she flinches away before she leans into it, bites down on the scream trying to escape her chest, tries to figure out which way is up, which way will allow her to move closer to him. She can’t see and she can’t _feel_ anything but the dizzy buzzing of her skin as panic closes her throat. Qrow’s saying something else and she can’t hear him, can’t tease the words from the sounds, can’t do anything but hold tight and tighter.

She can remember that he almost fell asleep with jesses on again, and how he’d muttered sleepy complaints when she made him move enough to take them off, and if she hadn’t…

Qrow’s hand disappears only to reappear on her ankle, before he gently disengages from her grasp. “Hang on, I think I can fix this,” he murmurs. “Just let me snag my knife, it’s got a screwdriver, should be small enough.” He keeps talking, his hand staying on her ankle, while he finds his pants on the floor. She can’t hear him well enough, can’t fake it when she can’t see his lips. Too old, and they got her when she was at the top of her game, now she’s half-deaf and completely blind and so very helpless.

“It’s going to be okay,” Qrow says, nudging her into a new position, and she trusts him, she does, as he pulls her head into his lap. “Can you hold still for me?”

Maria nods, and she knows he’s expecting something sarcastic to come out of her mouth, something true and cutting and confident, something that befits the Grim Reaper, but it’s not coming, she can’t do that she’s too _afraid_ to do anything but nod.

Qrow hums while he works, and it takes her a minute to place the song. It’s something huntsmen used to sing long ago before scrolls and comms, when they needed to synchronize, to give someone five or fifteen minutes to get into position. Maria didn’t know they still did that, since scrolls and comms are so much _better_. But maybe Qrow’s old enough to know both ways. She’s not really sure when they stopped. Maria was a pilot, when she couldn’t fight but still needed to eat, but they never needed her to do more than come when they called.

It’s the eighty-seventh verse, give or take, when there’s a whirr between her eyes and a searing white light that resolves into Qrow’s face, his lip caught between his teeth and his fingers soft at her temple. Maria smiles up at him, the tightness around her lungs relaxing enough for her to breathe “gracias,” up at him, for her to repeat so he can understand “thank you.”

Qrow helps her sit up, his arm around her shoulders like she’s a huntress still and not a helpless old woman, his lips pressing a kiss into her hair. “Here for you,” he says, sliding his fingers between hers. “It goes both ways.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No meme dump, but Qrow is humming Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.
> 
> Spanish used:
> 
>  _cuchillos reverentes_ reverent blades  
>  _Yo te cuido, me ocuparé de ti_ I'll take care of you, I'll look after you  
>  _Aquí me tienes, estoy aquí_ You have me, here I am for you.  
>  _camino de leche_ cum gutter. Sounds so much better in Spanish, ne? Literally milk path.  
>  _Mi corazón_ my heart  
>  _estás bien_ you're okay  
>  _gracias_ thank you


	5. me lo paro el taxi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we live, we die  
> in between we garden.  
> dos velas para el diablo  
> part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: Y'all. We need to talk about Beacon-era team STRQ. And why y'all think Qrow was a WORSE student than Raven. The man is the third most responsible reliable adult on the planet AND the reason he stopped teaching was to go do Ozpin's dirty work. 
> 
> Note the second: oh my god I don't even know what happened on this chapter, thank you Aerie for smashing my stroke-typing into some kind of coherency. All mistakes remaining are of course my own

Maria isn’t eavesdropping. She simply doesn’t want to interrupt when Ruby and Qrow choose to have a conversation in a public place. If they don’t notice her returning from Pietro’s workshop, that’s not her problem.

“You’re right, Uncle Qrow,” Ruby says, her voice high and clear and so damn young. And carrying halfway down the hall.

Oscar, Maria swears, materializes out of _thin air_ solely to look Qrow directly in the eye over Ruby’s head and say “Uncle _Chickadee_ ,” at Maria’s side as they walk into the briefing room turned not-student lounge.

Qrow accepts it as his due, though he visibly winces. “Everyone wonders if they’re doing the right thing sometimes, kiddo,” he says, his arm around Ruby’s shoulders and her looking up at him like she’s about to learn from his mistakes. “But if you spend too much time looking for answers, you’ll never do _anything_.” He pulls her closer, smiles down at her, and if it’s forced Maria can’t tell. “Trust your instincts and maybe try to remember what your Dad says about thinking things through.”

“Like you never do?” Ruby returns his smile with one Maria herself used to wear, hasn’t since her own father died so many years ago.

“ _Some_ body ought to, and you’re his last hope.” Qrow lets her go. “Let’s go find dinner.”

Oscar clears his throat. “Actually, the General wants you to eat dinner with him. He said to ask you to bring the sandwiches because you’re the only person in Atlas who can be trusted with that?”

Qrow sighs. “Who set him off?”

“Weiss’ dad, I think? He was coming out when I went in,” Oscar offers, and that makes Ruby’s face go serious as well.

“Let’s see if she wants us to bring her food instead,” Ruby says, and Oscar nods, and they leave with a wave. Not quite running out of the room, but close.

Qrow’s eyes follow Ruby, full of enough pride and affection to let a little girl fly. Then he turns to Maria, his hand going through his hair. “The sandwich thing is an old joke,” Qrow says, by way of explanation. “One of those you had to be there things. It means… well it means that the next person to fuck up in front of him is getting pistol-whipped so he’s removing himself from temptation.”

“Ruby’s a good kid,” Maria says, instead of pointing out that the General sure does ask Qrow to bring him takeout an awful lot, finds excuses for Qrow’s company an awful lot, which doesn’t exactly fit with Qrow’s nobody-loves-me routine. Instead of pointing out all the things that don’t fit with Qrow’s insistence that he has no place, because if she started they’d be stuck here until the Second Coming. “Anyone would be proud to have her as a daughter.”

Qrow’s hand falls from his head, slips into his pocket. “Yeah, her dad’s real proud of her. Of both his girls.”

“I meant you, cabeza de chorlito.” Maria had assumed Ruby’s dad was dead but she could roll with this.

“I’m not her father,” he says thick and low and so wrong Maria wishes for eyes to roll.

“She’s your little girl whether or not you fucked her mother,” she snaps, and Qrow jerks upright like this is somehow new information. “ _Look_ at her. Look at her clothes, her weapon. Not her bones. Look who she’s trying to be.”

Qrow crumples at that, visibly, and Maria curses herself silently. She’s no good at this. “All the things you did right by her,” she says and from the widening of his eyes he wants to believe her and she’s fumbling for the words to make him. Fumbling for his hand, trying to press the truth into his palm. The icy fingers of doubt all but sliding over her skin, can she do this? Can she convince him? “All the ways she’s seen you go right. She’s following those. And avoiding all the ways you went wrong,” she adds, because that’s part of the truth too. Ruby’s learned as much from Qrow’s mistakes as anyone. Certainly more than Qrow himself.

* * *

Sometimes Maria thinks he waits for her on the steps, and she’s not okay with that. It’s not like she knows when he arrives there with dry throat and shaking hands; not even her preflexes could bring her here reliably. And she _wants_ to be reliable, for him.

For herself.

This time, she finds him early, when the bars first open. Waiting for her, not knowing how long she spent that morning thinking about how the rest of them are slaying monsters and saving the world, while she abuses a kid’s hero worship to get laid. Waiting for her, and the relief relaxing his jaw when he sees her -that is something she is going to hang onto. This is not nothing. It is not much, perhaps, but it is not nothing.

“Come with me,” Maria says, heading towards the library. If she is going to do this thing, this one small thing, she will do it properly. She will not let him trade one chain for another.

“Where?” he rasps. “Got some fun _sober_ activity for us? We could make paper snowflakes, waste plenty of time that way.”

“You’ll see,” she says, gambling this won’t blow up in her face. It shouldn’t. Not when he has so many children surrounding him and Oscar’s forgiveness in his back pocket where he doesn’t have to face it.

“Fine, however you want to waste time,” he mutters. “I’m nothing but a waste of time, never been more, never will be.”

“Even when you were a teacher?” she asks, to keep from snapping at him because that _never_ actually breaks someone out of a self-loathing spiral. “What did you teach?”

“Strategy two and three, weapon forging, logistics if they needed another teacher,” Qrow mumbles. “Wilderness survival twice, ‘cause I pissed Tai off and he volunteered me for it.”

Maria had pegged him for a history teacher, and she says as much.

“Where do you think strategy comes from?” he asks, a flicker of something across his face, the building of something… but it falls as quickly as it grows. “Doesn’t matter, I quit, shouldn’t have started in the first place. Just killing time between missions.”

“But you did it,” she says, pushing the library door open. The library is fairly crowded, two weeks before the end of the semester, full of students frantically trying to learn in a day what it took Maria a lifetime. She is very, very glad she was too early for this, and yet she wonders what they know that she does not.

“I did. What are you doing? Why are we in the library?” For a huntsman and a teacher, he’s surprisingly _slow_ at times. He trails her as she walks to the nearest empty table, pulls out a chair. This is an absolutely brilliant idea she has. This will absolutely not backfire and land her in the headmaster’s office. Even if it does, Ironwood’s absolutely afraid of her.

Maria climbs up on the chair, puts her hand on his shoulder and uses that to balance as she stands on top of the table. “What are you doing?” Qrow hisses again, and isn’t it obvious?

“Does anyone need help with strategy?” she calls, loud and ringing through the room. The librarian stands up, angrily, and at least three students jump. She doesn’t care. “Tactics? I have right here a genuine _teacher_ -” she lifts Qrow’s hand as he attempts to cringe into his own shadow. “Who would be _very_ happy to help anyone who needs it.”

“What are you _doing_?” he squawks for the third time as the librarian starts heading towards them.

“If you’re just going to waste your time,” she says, using him to get back down on the ground, “you might as well help these kids.”

The room is silent, then near the back a young woman stands up and says, “Oh fuck _yes_ will you _please_ explain the battle of Tsushima to me?”

Maria nudges Qrow forward. “Look. That kid needs help. Go.”

He looks down at her, bewildered, and for a moment she fears she has made a horrible miscalculation.

Then he leans down and murmurs, “Thank you,” against her lips, kisses her brief and firey and full of promise for later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _cabeza de chorlito_ birdbrain


	6. avemaría

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we live, we die  
> in between we garden.  
> dos velas para el diablo  
> part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: hey remember Professor Branwen's Fireside Religion Chat?

When Maria was young, younger than anyone else here (save Penny) she would roll fragile tobacco leaves into cigarillos for her mother to make smoke offerings.

Maria never had much use for her mother’s goddesses, women of limitless power who only acted when their egos were sufficiently stroked, who demanded humans beg on their knees for the slightest blessing. At least _La Catrina_ was honest, in that way. She could not be moved, could not be pleaded with, came for everyone in their time and did not wait on rituals performed to her satisfaction.

In her youthful hubris, Maria dressed like her, like the promise she would bring death to the grimm regardless of payment or prayer. She didn’t understand then, that _true_ fairness took the good and the bad alike, saints and sinners falling under the same scythe.

Maria walked away from her mother’s goddesses, thought them childish, thought them petty, but thought them _real_. And in her most desperate nights, in the darkest noons she called on them, lit cigarillos as incense on their altars. When they did not offer her the slightest peace she cursed them for demanding more from her, cursed them for wanting her down on her knees, wanting her to sing hymns no human could teach to her.

She always thought they heard her, behind the stars, and never found her good enough. She believed their silence was what she earned.

Maria turned to her friends, as she’d been told, asked for help as they offered, asked for what she needed. Leaned on them, until they faltered under her weight and she was left with two metal eyes, an address book full of numbers that never picked up anymore. Maria burned through her friends like tobacco leaves on the altar, learned they were no different than her mother’s useless goddesses. Half of them, she was just too much for. Half of them, she just didn’t beg prettily enough, didn’t play into their savior fantasies.

Nothing in this world but capricious goddesses and fickle people, and for so many years at least she knew what was happening. Why things were happening. At least someone out there was doling out justice and mercy according to their own rule, even if it was so very different from what Maria thought fair.

Until she found that everything she’d ever believed in was a lie.

Two gods, not thirteen goddesses. A moon broken in flight, not slowly coming together. Humanity exterminated and reborn, and nobody left to hear futile prayers.

No justice, no mercy. Not even the great leveller of the grave.

So be it.

Maria will _make_ it real. This is mercy, Qrow’s head in her lap as he fails again, falls into the bottle again, and her hands in his hair stroking forgiveness. This is justice, cool water in his mouth and his tongue hot against her fingers and jesses wrapped tight around her fist.

This is all she can manage, with her broken half-life. One man, who could manage without her but who takes everything sweeter at her feet, and pretends not to see the weak clay those feet are made of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _La Catrina_ A skeleton wearing a very fancy dress, because all the money in the world will not save you.


	7. un buen año para las rosas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we live, we die  
> in between we garden.  
> dos velas para el diablo  
> part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: The password is always swordfish
> 
> Note the second: Dudes, I have so many bird names. So many. You have no idea. Qrow's lucky Yang put the kibosh on the snow-tits.

It’s not hard to sneak into Atlas Academy’s library, which is absolutely something Maria will bring up to the General if he ever gathers up his courage enough to face her; she has a whole list of rookie mistakes he’s making. In the meantime, she’s looking for something to read. Perhaps a book of fairy tales since they’re coming alive all around her.

She’s not looking for Qrow but she’s not entirely surprised to see him by the computers, taking dictation from some kid she’s never seen before in an Atlas Academy uniform. Maria doesn’t say anything but she smiles as she disappears into the stacks. By the time she emerges with three books in her hands, the kid is clutching a stack of printouts and Qrow is saying, “Ironwood would absolutely love to help you, but he can’t do that if he doesn’t _know_.”

The kid’s response is lost in the warm secondhand pride wrapping around Maria’s shoulders. Qrow is more than a drunk and a hunstman, and it’s time he recognized that. About time he found something to do between killing monsters. About time he remembered why monsters need to be killed.

“I used to do that for my sister,” Qrow says, interrupting her thoughts, and her eyes seem very loud as she focuses on him. “Some people, the actual writing is just…“ He waves a hand, and Maria nods. “She used to forget by the end of the sentence what she wanted to write, and it wasn’t because she didn’t know the answer. She’s not lazy or stupid.”

“Some people do just fine with swords, but couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a gun,” Maria offers.

“She couldn’t do _that_ either,” Qrow laughs, then sighs. “James wouldn’t want these kids to get a bad grade because putting it on paper is hard but nobody can _help_ if they don’t know what’s wrong.”

Maria just stares at him, waiting for him to realize what he just said. Resisting the urge to whack him on the head with her stick.

“People can help!” Qrow says, quickly. “It’s different!”

Maria keeps staring at him, hoping that some long-dormant brain cell will awaken.

“It is!” he insists. “It’s not a _choice_!”

“You’re right,” she allows. “But how many people thought it was, call these students lazy or stupid?” Qrow doesn’t say anything, just looks away. “That kid, did he know you would help when he asked? That you _could_?”

“I offered,” Qrow says to his knees, and Maria almost throws the damn books at him, percussive maintenance to jar something into working order. Qrow looks back up at her. “He didn’t ask me. I don’t know if it’s because someone else taught him _not_ to. For all everyone says _ask for help_ , how many times have you seen the answer be _no_?”

Maria does not have an answer for that. Qrow stands up, takes the books from her unresisting hands. She wants to apologize, but she’s not sure what she would be apologizing for.

“I wish it was that easy,” he says library-quiet, dancing around the edges of something she can only guess the shape of. “Some people, most people, when they say it they really mean it. But they don’t know how _hard_ it is to help. And they can’t, not really, but they half-kill themselves trying. Or they have to abandon… who they’re trying to help.” Experience thickens his voice and Maria is not sure which of the three he was. Perhaps all of them.

Maria reaches out, wraps her fingers around his wrist, unsure of what to say. Qrow closes his eyes. “There’s so much I can’t control, so many things I can’t help but destroy,” he says, half to himself. “What right do I have to hurt them even _more_?”

Oh, Maria understands. Maria understands too well. Qrow is taking almost everything she has, more patience than she knew she possessed, and it is so very, very tempting when he is drowning the deepest and needs her the most, when he’s at his most _obnoxious_ , to walk away. So many times only sheer stubborness and spite keep her hands and words gentle.

Maria understands, memories long buried of pleading and them saying _you have to learn to do it yourself,_ them saying _i’m sorry i can’t anymore_ , the phone ringing and ringing and going unanswered. Memories she keeps beating back of burning every bridge, rising up on tottering feet only to have what little support she has whisked away before she finds her balance. Of being called lazy and selfish. Accused of _malingering._ Of _milking_ it.

Qrow’s hand is on her face, suddenly, and his eyes are not pink but silver-red. “It’s a hell of a thing, to be able to trust someone,” he says. And he _knows_ , she realizes. He _knows_ what she’s doing and how hard it is. He knows what taking care of him shields her from.

Good. That means he knows she won’t give up on him. Can’t give up on him.

* * *

Oscar’s a good kid, and so Maria finds time to rectify the large gaping holes in his education. Today, it’s that he’s never seen _Horse Feathers_ , which is nigh-unforgivable on his aunt’s part. How is he supposed to know the password if nobody’s taught him?

“Ruby’s looking for you,” Qrow says from the doorway of her room as the credits roll. He’s been standing there for some times, Maria knows, but if he wants to lurk in doorways she’s not going to stop him.

Oscar wipes the last tears of laughter from his eyes. “Thanks, Maria,” he says, finding his feet.

“And now you know what the password is,” she says, reaching for the remote. She’s glad he enjoyed the movie; it’s so old _she_ doesn’t even get all the jokes. There’s more than enough in there that are timeless, it seems.

Qrow doesn’t move out of Oscar’s way. “What’s the password, farmboy?”

“Swordfish,” Oscar answers, adds “Woodpecker,” and Qrow smiles, brittle and fake as he lets Oscar out.

“Woodpecker?” Maria asks, as Qrow shuts the door behind the boy. “You know, I don’t think I’ve heard him use your name since-” Since Qrow apologized to him, but Maria substitutes that with, “We got here.”

Qrow shrugs, doesn’t explain why what _should_ be turnabout and fair play draws the lines of his body so tight. He’s not smiling anymore as he drops to his knees. “You weren’t on the stairs,” he says, no accusation in his voice. Just confusion, and maybe a little bit of hurt, and his hands behind his back.

Maria stands, makes her way to his drawer where the jesses are. “You found me,” she points out. Sometimes he needs the obvious, in small words. Most of them, really. This is the generation that’s going to save the world? They’re good kids, but they need things spelled out in monosyllables and crayons, she swears. “Why is Oscar still calling you by every bird _but_ crows?”

He exhales, heavily, relieved as she tightens the jesses around first one wrist, then the other. “He’s testing me, I think.”

Maria comes around him from the other side like she always completes the circle, slides her arms over his shoulders like she always does, draws him close like she always does. They do not discuss this, anymore. Words, words are cheap at best, lies at worst. Actions are where the truth lives, and she lets her actions speak for her, waits for his in turn.

Qrow lays his head on her shoulder, does not attempt to kiss her, barely puts any weight against her. He does not ask, in so many words, to just be held tonight. If he does not ask, he will not be told no.

She tugs him back to where she was sitting. Maria would not tell him no, not for that. She did not put that fear in his throat, and she cannot pull it out easily. Someone already tried, she can tell, and worked it halfway loose before something intervened. Maria suspects it was Ruby’s mother, and it was her death that cut the work short. 

Or maybe it was Ozpin, betrayal shoving it back down.

It doesn’t matter who started, she will continue. She lets Qrow settle with his head on her knee, her hand stroking through his hair. “Why is he testing you?”

“Seeing where I’ll hit him again,” Qrow mumbles. “I won’t. Not him.” His fingers, bare, spread over her lap. “I _won’t_ ,” he repeats, and who exactly is he trying to convince? Then he snorts. “Especially not if he’s just calling me different birds. I’ve been called worse.”

Maria, in fact, has called him worse. Though he had deserved it.

“But.” Qrow’s voice is low and rough as he rubs his cheek against the worn-soft fabric of her skirt. “If it makes him feel safer, I’m the adult, I owe him that.” His eyes are closed, eyelashes dark against his cheek. “And even if he was older, he doesn’t owe me any respect.”

He’s so beautiful, under her hands, through mechanical lenses, and Maria wonders what he would look like to her eyes.

They sit like that for what seems, to Maria, a very long time. She combs his fingers through his hair, almost like counting worry beads. His hands close into fists, eventually, clinging tight to her skirt. Not as a child hides his face, but as a man presses something precious against his lips.

“Ruby looks so much like her mother,” he says. “Can barely tell them apart in pictures. But she cut her hair and...She’s allowed to do whatever she wants with her hair.” He sighs. “Summer cut her hair short like that once, lost a chunk in a fight and tried to even it out. She _hated_ it.”

Those are the last words Qrow says for the rest of the evening.

He moves after a few minutes more, presses his forehead against his own knuckles. Maria counts the bones sharp in his neck, down to the long seventh one reaching for her under his skin, and then counts back up. The rhythm grounds her, gives her something to focus on beyond how helpless she is in the face of his grief.

When he inhales long and shuddering, long after she’s lost count of how many times her hand has made the circuit, she traces that hand down the long rough line of his jaw, tilts his chin until he meets her eyes. “Bed,” she says quietly, and when he does not move towards his drawer she does not argue with him about street clothes between her sheets. 

Instead, she keeps the jesses tight around her hand, allows him to tangle himself around her, strokes her thumb along his collarbone. “Tell me about Summer?” she asks, quiet in the darkness.

Qrow shakes his head, and if he is too afraid to hear _no_ from her lips, at least he is not too afraid to say it to her. “I. If I do, I’ll go.” He sighs into her hair, and she understands he doesn’t mean go _away_ from her, but go _to_ find alcohol. “I _can’t_.”

“You don’t have to, mi corazón,” she says, trying to hide her relief. Now she understands why Thundercracker’s response to everything was sex. It is so much easier.

Qrow in her arms is burning with grief, trembling, fearful. “It was a good year for the roses,” he says, the beginning of a story.

But then he speaks no more, until the sun rises unseen and the night is folded away.


	8. hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he talks. she listens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: WELL WE'RE HAVING A WILD RIDE AREN'T WE? 
> 
> Note the second: again thanks to Aerie for the beta and the Spanish
> 
> Note the third: unused tags include "Qrow kills spiders for her" because the spider got cut, several insults to Jaune's new haircut, and a witty reference to Oscar's benign trolling.
> 
> Note the fourth: yes, that really happened to Skywarp.

Lucky huntresses die on the field, or lucky huntsmen die surrounded by family. Unlucky hunters learn the midnight burrito test, something Maria sincerely wishes to _never_ experience again.

She might have to devise a new test for Atlas Academy to fail. Can someone of below-average height prepare a hot beverage without having to find a damn stepladder? Do they have a minimum height for students? Probably. She ought to trap the General in a corner and give him a piece of her mind.

It’s more frustrating than the usual annoyances, because there are accommodations everywhere she looks. Dimmer switches added to every light, holes cut in every chair for Faunus tails. Raised dots on every door, shining new. But no rhyme or reason, no uniformity. Nothing built in, nothing _planned._ Maria suspects everything not designed for a seven-foot tall beefcake of a human was put into place only once someone complained.

She gives them half-credit, no more, no less. A little extra for inspiring people to speak up, balanced out by points docked for waiting until someone asked.

There is no stepladder, and even if she managed to pull one of these heavy chairs over she’s not sure there will be anything in the overhead cupboard but more coffee, and she does not _want_ coffee, does not want any more bitterness on her tongue and acid in her stomach. Maria ought to just go down to the cafeteria, or out into town proper to find a donut shop. Or just go back to bed. That sounds good. Go back to bed, let the fuzz wrap damply around her head, turn off her eyes and let herself drown.

She has now had her mechanical eyes more than half her life.

The bed is all the way in the other room, through halls too clean and hopeful, so first she puts her hands on the counter and simply exists for a time, for minutes or decades, until Jaune comes in looking for Ruby. His hair looks like a pile of bananas and Maria cannot look directly at him.

She turns away and sees Oscar standing straight and strong with his hands behind his back. “Buenas mañana,” he says slow and careful, his face drawn in concentration.

It’s wrong but she doesn’t care, it’s enough that he’s trying. “Buenos dias, granjerito. What are you calling him today?” It’s the first thing that pops into her head. It is much easier to appreciate the effort when he doesn’t _continue_.

Oscar grins at her, looking very much his age for once. “Rose-breasted grosbeak,” he says. “Grackle tomorrow.”

“How many of these do you _have_?” Maria has never heard of a grosbeak, and every grackle she’s seen had a blue head. He must be nearing the end of the list.

Oscar looks at the ceiling, nodding slightly as he counts. “Fourteen more,” he says. “Then maybe I’ll go back to the books.” He looks back at her. “Is it bothering him?”

“A little,” Maria allows, because that is the point, isn’t it? To see how much Oscar can hurt him and still be safe from Qrow’s ire. “No more than he deserves.” 

“Good,” Oscar says. When he smiles, he looks like Thundercracker’s old partner, the biggest troll Maria has _ever_ met. She’s old enough, though, that everyone reminds her of someone else, no real meaning in the resemblance, only memories. Oscar’s plenty smarter than Skywarp ever was, and only half as cruel, but their eyes crinkle the same way at the corners, they have the same way of pushing and pushing and pushing as far as they can and then just one shove more. She hopes Oscar has a happier ending than Skywarp did; all but duct-taped to the wall, unable to even microwave a burrito without someone else deciding it was mealtime.

Then Jaune and Oscar leave, and Maria is alone.

She’s just managed to hook the door open and is debating tossing her stick up there to see what she can knock down when Qrow wanders in, muttering under his breath about Oscar’s seemingly-endless supply of bird names. He stops, looks from her to the open cupboard, and asks, “You want me to get something down for you?”

“I can get it myself,” she snaps, but he shrugs off her foul temper. Or perhaps accepts it as his due.

“Never said you couldn’t. But,” he reaches in, stupidly tall, shuffles what’s in there around, trying to find it by feel alone so he doesn’t have to look away from her. “That doesn’t mean I can’t help.” He pulls down the can of cocoa mix without being told that’s what she wants, and then a mug.

Their fingers brush when she takes it from him, and she can see the faintest smile hidden in the corner of his eyes at the touch. She thinks of all the times he’s insisted on carrying her books back from the library, offered his arm on icy pavement. She thinks of him collapsed uselessly over a glass, crushed under the weight of a burden he refuses to shift to anyone else. She thinks of him helping to raise two little girls.

She thinks of the tremor in his voice when he said he thought he was doing good.

Maria can take care of herself. Can do everything, anything she needs for herself. Microwave burritos whenever she wants despite what some other people may think. But perhaps it would not set a precedent, if she stepped back from time to time and let Qrow help. Perhaps he needs to help her more than she needs his help.

* * *

Maria is happy to help Pietro, and it’s not just keeping busy. Not when she can magnify her vision to lay wires no thicker than a hair without bulky machines in her way. It’s delicate work, in the night-stillness of her room.

There’s a knock on the door and she tells whoever it is that it’s open, is utterly unsurprised when Qrow comes in. He closes it behind him, leans his forehead against it, and sighs. Maria sets the wires aside, clicks her eyes back to normal, and waits.

Qrow walks to her, nothing so much as a man walking to his death, kneels at her feet and lays his head in her lap like an executioner’s block, eyes closed and hands behind his back. “Isn’t this what I’m supposed to do,” he says, voice low and lower. “Come ask for help.”

“Yes,” Maria says, letting her hands alight on his shoulders. He does not move and so she does not rise for the jesses.

He looks up, and the devotion in his eyes is heady, strong, almost enough to fool herself into thinking she has what he needs. “I’m not drinking,” he says to her leg. “I came here. To talk.”

Did Maria ever say he could talk to her? That doesn’t sound right, con un chingado, she’s not stupid enough to offer that. Talking _isn’t_ going to help, or if it will it won’t be talking to _her_. It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him to go somewhere else, go to _someone_ else. Somebody who might have a fucking clue, someone who’s not a failure. Who didn’t break and run. Who can _help_.

She’s so tempted to abandon him, to tell him to go away and come back when his problems are manageable and when she’s not in the middle of something. To tell him not to bother her, she will not help him. Cannot help him. And it would be for his own good, or so she’d tell herself so she could sleep at night.

He is so heavy in her lap, exhausting weight. She will not send him away.

“So talk, then,” she says, sinking her fingers into his hair. He tries to hide his face in her thighs but she doesn’t allow it, her hands gentle as death’s kiss and just as firm.

“Where do I start?” He pulls away, sits back on his heels, reaches for where there once was a flask but she catches his hand, strokes her thumb over the back of his wrist. He has not asked for the jesses, not aloud, not silently, but she does not need them to remind him of the promises that hold him fast to her.

“The beginning is traditional,” Maria says after a moment, when it’s clear he needs prompting.

And so he does.

Qrow speaks of the bandit tribe that raised him, that hated him, that named him a curse and of all those years with only his sister at his back. Of going to Beacon, away from home for the first time, the entire tribe could fit in the auditorium and sleeping without seeing the stars, with his sister’s hand still tight in his.

He speaks of Taiyang, bright and warm and steady as the earth underfoot, slow to anger and quick to laugh, teaching half-feral bandit children of safety and sweetness. Summer, silver moon to Tai’s sun, gentle hands like cool water and a spine of steel, not drawing them out of the darkness so much as going in after them.

He speaks of school days, safe and terrifying, secrets weighing on his shoulders, kindness piled upon generosity upon _civilization,_ all the little annoyances sanding away his roughest edges. Of building his weapon, triple-changing for fighting monsters and men, one mode to protect and two to kill, in the shape of hers. As he hoped to shape _himself_ like her.

He speaks of Ozpin eternal, unchanged by the passage of time, or so he seemed when they were young. Of trust extended and repaid by a thousand petty betrayals so easily forgiven, crude tests of loyalty from his sister who knew no other way to repay that trust, from Qrow himself who had no _faith_. Of team missions, adventures. Writing papers for Raven as she mixed up Dust for him. Summer’s silver eyes on the battlefield and Taiyang’s dumplings seasoned with victory.

He speaks of after school, a small house on a small island, Ozpin’s magic braided around their bones, something that if he tipped his head and squinted might be happiness. Would he know it if he saw it? Raven’s secret, shared only between the two of them until the doubt passed and Taiyang’s smile when she told him, how could such thing be called a smile, such a small word for such a great thing. Summer cradling the baby in her arms all blonde hair and violet eyes, Qrow himself thinking that this was …

As good as it would ever be.

And once he’s told her of everything he had, he tells her of everything he’s lost.

Raven first, gone back to a place he won’t call home, people he won’t call family, for reasons he won’t call right but can’t call wrong. The three of them swaying around Yang, slicing themselves, slicing _each other_ on the sharp hole Raven used to fill, Yang the only thing holding them together with her infant-grief until they found their new balance and please let Ruby be Tai’s daughter because Qrow could never deserve his own.

Summer next, on a mission one day and not home the next, or the next, or the next. A marker for an empty grave and questions from little girls he doesn’t have answers for, questions from him Ozpin doesn’t have answers for and for the first time he realizes how powerless the wizard can be. Taiyang third, or as good as, sunk deep and deeper in the luxury of grief, nothing gold can stay but Qrow is dusty coal and he can make sandwiches and braid hair and read bedtime stories from fairytale books and mark time, so much time.

A flask, brown and silver filled with honey-burned whiskey, the only peace he knows, the only _sleep_ he knows when his nieces look at him with their mothers’ eyes.

He’s talking faster now, and she keeps her fingers slow on his wrists, gentle on his skin, even as he grips her skirt in fists so tight she half-fears his skin will crack and bleed.

Ozpin the last remaining shelter in the hurricane as his semblance drags a raging storm across everything he loves, cursing everything he knows and only the wizard immune. Ozpin telling him again and again that he was doing good, that he was wanted, that they’d be worse off if he left, that he was _needed_. Staying close to home, as much as he could, so many things to protect them from. Grimm. Salem. Himself. Missions for Oz, so much to protect, so much to ground to cover soaring on night-black wings. Ozpin looking tired. Teaching Ozpin to play poker in the long sleepless watches of the night, how did Oz not know it already. Realizing Oz did.

Rebuilding a life, shadow of those brief shining seasons, Ozpin the tentpole of this new world as Raven was of the old. Teaching, kids so young and innocent and he couldn’t take that from them, let the other teachers worry about it as he told them stories and one day he realized he’d been without Summer at his side longer than he had her. Yang picking up Summer’s gauntlets and Ruby Qrow’s own scythe. Yang with Qrow’s shotgun and Ruby with Tai’s sniper rifle and Raven only a dream, a nightmare, a dream.

This new world burning around him, falling in a night, but he’s older and stronger and Ozpin does what Summer does not, what Raven refuses to. Ozpin returned wearing the face of a child but when he smiled his eyes were the same and that was enough. Had to be enough. His sister and Leo and the sinking realization that he was the only one left, the only adult the children could trust, the nightmare of before in triple-time.

Qrow’s been talking for, it has to have been hours, his voice is rough and Maria wishes she could offer him water without asking him to let go. 

“And then,” he says, his eyes silvered-blood on her face. “You were there.”

She was.

Qrow drops his head, like he can hide his tears from her when they’re soaking her skirt. “How was that supposed to help,” he murmurs, felt more than heard.

“Ay, mi corazón.” Maria doesn’t know, doesn’t know what to do but bend over his head, and she is very small and weak and helpless in the face of his pain. Her fingers comb uselessly in his hair. What did it cost him, to heap this at her feet, and how is she ever supposed to return it? She wishes she could do something for him, but she cannot even weep.

She cannot lead him down the path, she does not even know where the path is. All she can do is walk beside him, so he is not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish used  
>  _Buenas mañana_ good morning, only wrong.  
>  _Buenos dias, granjerito_ Good morning, little farmer  
>  _con un chingado_ what the fuck (loosely)  
>  _Ay, mi corazón_ Oh, my heart


	9. el perdón

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look. I swear I listen to people who are not Enrique Iglesias.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: Thanks, as always, to Aerie for the beta and the Spanish.
> 
> Note the second: Here be more relapsing into alcoholism.
> 
> Note the third: this new non-Enrique album I'm listening to is not a jam.

“Why,” Yang asks Maria, low and hard, “does he like _you_ more than _us._ ”

Maria supposes she should be grateful Yang isn’t speculating, but it’s too early in the morning for this. Too early in the morning to face Yang. If Qrow is all Maria’s failures writ small and Ruby who Maria once was, Yang is who she should have become.

Maria will never be ready to face Yang.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, distractedly wondering if Yang set up an ambush or took advantage of the situation.

“My uncle quit drinking for _you_.” Yang’s anger is stretched thin over the bewildered sadness of a child not understanding why some people have so much and others just keep losing.

Maria sighs and folds her hand over her cane. “For _your_ sake, and your sister’s.” And Oscar’s, and all the rest of his adopted flock’s, but she doesn’t mention that part.

_Nobody knew_ , Qrow said three nights ago, about working for Ozpin. _Tai and Glynda and Jimmy, that was it. Not even the girls. It was safer that way, to be the guy who took shitty missions out of scroll range. To be the drunk who disappeared on week-long bar crawls_.

Yang thinks she and her sister were, if not the entirety of her uncle’s world, the center of it, the axis around which it spun, and Maria is absolutely not going to tell her different. “You’re the one who asked him,” she says. Guess, really.

“And _you’re_ the one he asked for help,” Yang shoots back. Maria is not a good enough person for this, not patient enough to gently lead Yang down the path of understanding. Maria is also approximately a hundred and eighty years too old to deal with this kind of family drama.

Then again, given what she’s heard, it’s not Yang’s fault. Perhaps she simply does not _know_.

“You are too damn smart for this,” she says, poking her stick in Yang’s direction. “Do you know what he tells me, again and again? That the only thing he’s ever managed to do right was take care of the two of you. Be there for you and Ruby. So why, por el amor de dios y todos los santos, would you take that away from him?”

Yang has no reply in the face of that, but her eyes slip towards red and the blood she shares with her uncle has never been more obvious.

“He wants to be who you think he is,” Maria says, quickly, because Yang has a _talent_ for saying the most cutting things to rival Oscar’s, and there are so many truths Maria does not want to hear before breakfast, truths Yang keeps loaded like shotgun shells.

Qrow’s footsteps are a welcome escape, and at the sound Yang abandons her attack for the true mission objective. She charges her uncle at roughly half Ruby’s speed, engulfing him in a hug hard enough that he can’t hide how he winces and grunts before his arms are around her just as tight. “I’m glad Raven didn’t get you in the divorce,” she says into his shoulder.

“She tried, firecracker, more than once.” Qrow’s face is soft, his voice gentle, and just for a minute Maria sees the man Yang knows, the hero who arrives in the nick of time and stays until the cleanup is done. “I picked you and your sister every time.”

* * *

Qrow knocks on the door.

It has to be Qrow; nobody else never shows up at her room and he always knocks in a pattern that she hasn’t told him yet used to mean, “chinga tu madre.” She _has_ told him not to bother knocking but he always does regardless, no polite warning from the man raised by bandits and bartenders, but a pregnant question of if she’ll let him in.

He comes, and he _asks_ , and she takes such small victories now because they are all she gets anymore.

It’s later than he usually shows up, so late she’s already in bed, and she can’t stop the frisson of ice-blue fear across her shoulders when she tells him to come in.

He sways in, lets the door slam behind him, staggers towards her. Tries to drop to his knees in front of her, misjudges the distance and has to crawl the last few feet to lay his head in her lap.

Qrow is, once again, drunk.

“Jimmy offered,” he says by way of explanation, and it takes her a minute to realize that _Jimmy_ means _General James Ironwood_. “And what was I supposed to say, no, thanks, I’m a drunk, so I don’t drink anymore?” Qrow’s voice is thick with failure but surprisingly clear. “And it was _good_ , he’s always got the good stuff, you know.”

Maria runs her fingers through his hair, waiting for the crisis. She can’t hear any sirens or smell smoke so how bad can it really be? He is a bit clumsy sometimes, perhaps he broke some delicate mechanism. Perhaps he broke the headmaster physically. Not mentally; they’ve known each other long enough that if mere words were enough Ironwood would have shot Qrow long ago.

It is a _frequent_ temptation, she has come to understand, for anyone who spends more than twenty minutes in his presence. Ten, if he’s awake.

“And then he poured me a second, and that was even better because then everything stopped hurting, fucking _quiet_ for once, and that was so good.” There’s a sniff and really, there should be a limit to how many times she has to wash his bodily fluids out of her clothes. She understands now why her mother was so insistent on clean pocket handkerchiefs.

“Then what?” she asks, quietly, when he doesn’t confess to whatever sin sent him to her room in tears. Very manly and mature tears.

“Then I ran away, said goodnight and bailed, before he could give me a third.”

Maria waits, her hands never stilling. How much is the alcohol, she wonders, and how much his own shame?

“And then I came here,” he whispers, bitterly. “Failures ought to stick together.”

Well that was just uncalled for.

Maria does not actually give a shit if Qrow drinks or not. His kids are safe in Atlas, the relic with them. He can drown in the gutter if it makes him happy, or he can construct elaborate rules, _only drink on Tuesdays, only drink with Ironwood, only drink under the full moon._ He can go cold-turkey and never touch a drop, it’s all the same to her. She will help him, however he asks, and he’s only ever asked for distraction. Never once for her to let him go, but if he _did_ she _would_. She’d follow him to make sure he didn’t get his face eaten by grimm, but Maria will not, _cannot_ stop him.

“So you had a few drinks and stopped.” She snorts. “That’s not failure. That’s moderation.” He peers up through his bangs at her but she keeps her fingers in his hair so he can’t turn away from the truth. “You didn’t fail. You made a choice to have one drink, to have a second, and then to stop before anything bad happened.”

“And next time?” he says, turning his face back to her knee, and she allows it.

“Then you choose again.” Her fingers curl, over the fragile naked back of his neck. She cannot lead him down the path, cannot show him which path to take. All she can do is walk with him so he is not alone. “It’s always been your choice, mi corazón,” she says, gentle as she can manage. “Always been in your control. You just didn’t want to admit it.”

“So this whole time, this _whole time_ ,” he says and she cuts him off before he can start swinging.

“This whole time, you wanted to fuck me more than you wanted to go to the bar,” she says, a little bite to her words. “I wasn’t stopping you. Just helping you keep busy.”

Finally, _finally_ he starts to relax under her hands, slumps forward, his weight spreading over her legs like a blanket. “It was all you,” she tells him. Perhaps he didn’t know that. Sometimes Qrow is not a very smart man.

He looks up at her, unspoken plea in his eyes. “Will you, still?”

“Of course,” she answers, smiling down at him. “You’re not the only one who likes to keep busy.” She brushes his bangs back from his face, and he doesn’t look like he believes _anything_ she’s said tonight, but he looks like he wants to.

Qrow stands once she lifts her hands from him completely, and stretches as Maria slides over to make room for him on her bed. She no longer has to remind him no shoes between her sheets, (surely if the bandits didn’t teach him that the bartenders managed to) and he slips between her and the wall. They shift, tangle together like hunters only do when they truly trust the one who has the watch. And for all General Ironwood is pound for pound equally the idiot Qrow is, Maria _does_ trust him to keep them safe.

“I don’t want to do it again,” Qrow admits to her hair, as she listens to his heart steady under her ear.

“How lucky you are,” she murmurs, “that your last drink was with a friend. And nobody died.” His arms tighten around her shoulders, damn, lucky was the wrong word, and she continues before he can start. “Smart, to go out on a high note and to quit before anything bad happened.”

“Plenty bad could have happened,” he says to the darkness, and she knows that. Oh, how she knows that.

“But you’re quitting before anything did. That’s more than nothing.” Is that the right thing to say? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. It’s true; Maria’s seen some truly _epic_ drunken fuckups in her day. She’s not going to deny that things _might_ have ended horribly if Ruby hadn’t intervened -but the fact remains that Ruby _did_ , and from the stories they tell it’s not that she’s been cleaning up his messes for over a decade. Before it got so bad, before _he_ got so bad, he raised her right.

Qrow makes a noise low in his throat, like maybe he doesn’t believe her, like maybe if he believes her he’ll waver. “Never going to get that close again.”

Maria knows he means it, with every atom in his soul, with his fingers running over her bones transforming those seven words into a sacred vow. And she knows, with equal certainty, that he will fail. Weeks or months or years down the line -he spends a lot of time around Ironwood, around Summer’s daughters, it’ll probably be closer to weeks -he’ll give in to temptation, return to the sweet burn that does truly help in one small way even as it makes so many other, more important, things worse.

It will be okay.

Qrow will return to her, stinking of failure and alcohol, lay his head in her lap and get snot all over her skirt. But one mistake won’t wipe out all the good he’ll do between now and then. She won’t let it. She’ll grant him whatever forgiveness he asks for.

If there is no mercy, no justice, no absolution from heaven, Maria must find it in her own hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _por el amor de dios y todos los santos_ \- For the love of God and all the saints  
>  _chinga tu madre_ \- Fuck your mother.   
> _mi corazón_ \- my heart


	10. muy dentro de mi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: Again, thank you Aerie for the beta and the Spanish. There is not actually Spanish in this one.
> 
> Note the second: Here there be some graphic eye trauma.

Maria can taste her own blood, thick and copper in her mouth, extra salty, she’s had plenty of her own blood in her mouth before but this is _different_ , this is mixed in with her _eyes_ and she can’t see, darkness pressing around her thick and hot, how many were there, _who_ were they, is there anyone coming for her, nobody knows to come help her-- There’s a touch at her shoulder and she turns on instinct, on training, on semblance-sharp reflexes, tries to defend herself, tries to push them away but they grab her hand and

And

And it’s Qrow, folding his fingers around her fist, folding his arm around her shoulders, folding his body around hers, making a sound in the back of his throat that’s not quite words and not quite human, soft black wings trying to brush away her nightmare but it’s not a dream it’s a _memory_ and, “She took my _eyes,_ ” and Maria cannot start screaming because she never really stopped, never really picked herself up off the stony ground, will always be trapped there with rocks digging into her knees and dust in her throat and bloody tears on her face, last ones she’ll ever shed.

“I know,” Qrow says, fingers on the curve of her cheek, finding the ancient line where the blade sliced, “It’s not really something people miss.”

Maria recognizes that, knows it for the defusing attempt it is, but that no longer works for her after _decades,_ not when they hunted her down and stole her eyes, stole more than that, left her useless in the dirt mud on her skirt from her own blood and so many stains, her life defined by an accident of birth, by someone taking away what she never asked for and more besides.

If she’d been smarter, trained more in fighting people, if she’d been _better_ , this wouldn’t have happened. This was no act of, hah, the goddesses, no accident of nature. This was _people_ and their infinite cruelty. “Who hunts someone down to steal eyeballs, even, aren’t Grimm enough?”

“I guess not,” Qrow says, tucking her against his chest, and she should push him away, should not allow him to protect her too, should not allow him to set himself on fire to keep her warm but she is so very very cold. His hand is in her hair, so gentle, like hers in his so many nights. She doesn’t know how to tell him that does not comfort her. Nothing can comfort her.

She has no words for her selfish grief and he does not ask for them, only combs his fingers through her hair, hums a song she does not know. Not a huntsman song.

Maria was never anything but a huntress, never could be anything but a huntress even when she couldn’t bear to hunt. To be alone, and yet nobody would go out with her, nobody would stay with her, and it’s only a matter of time before Qrow manages to stay sober long enough to leave her too.

She should not lean against him, should not allow herself to be comforted by something she’ll lose so soon. And yet she does, lets her hitching dry sobs calm under his hand tracing down her spine, lets her racing heart slow to match the steady beat of his own. Lets herself believe, if not that things are okay, she’ll at least be able to fake it in the morning.

“Better?” Qrow asks, drawing the blanket around her, hiding her.

Maria looks up at him because _that’s_ a dumb fucking question. How can it _ever_ be better. “She _took_ my eyes,” she reminds Qrow. “And then I didn’t even have enough sense to die.”

“I’m rather glad you didn’t,” he murmurs. “Then I never would have met you.”

“Don’t,” she snaps, but she can’t quite make herself kick him out of her bed, can’t quite make herself leave the shelter of his embrace. “Don’t even waste your breath.”

His hands have not stopped moving, never stopped touching her, tracing the outlines of the person he thinks she is. Now they pull her closer to his chest as he leans back against the headboard and she knows he is settling in for the rest of the night and she wants to hate him, wants to fight him, but she is so tired. She’s been tired since her mechanical eyes opened and everyone took that as a signal to demand she keep up with _their_ pace, their timeline, dangled other people in front of her to shame her into speed and it was so hard not to hate the ones who lost limbs to accidents, to grimm. 

So hard to not hate other people for their recoveries when hers is a _joke_. As soon as it got hard she picked fights, so many fights, and used that as an excuse to hide. Weak and worthless, her eyes the only thing that ever mattered, and with them gone no-one bothering to come for her except to stroke their own egos. All her hiding, all her cowardice, and nobody ever came after her twice, helpless and useless as she is.

The same thoughts circling around her head, grooves carved by jagged crocodile teeth the last 

thing she ever saw and worn smooth by repetition again and again and again while everyone else accepted their shiny new body parts and swung right back into the fight. Again and again and nothing helped, not even alcohol, night after night after night of dark memory and the taste of her own eyeballs under her tongue. Maria is so tired.

Tired of being afraid, tired from being afraid. Too afraid to sleep, too tired to fight dream-memory worse than any nightmare the darkness of her subconscious could devise. Tired of waiting for the rest of them to come to their senses and leave her behind, trapped in a quarantined city.

Qrow is humming still, now a song she only half-recognizes and doesn’t know if it has words, something that spins out low and slow and moonlit-silver.

* * *

“Uncle Qrow,” Ruby calls across the library, and Maria half-expects Oscar to pop out from between the stacks to suggest white wagtail or whatever the bird of the day is.

Qrow looks up, and the wolf-eared girl he’s helping says, “I think I get it now, thank you,” before making her escape. Maria wonders if she truly does,or if she just wants to stop thinking about what guys in the army do when they get bored. Forget how that affects battle-readiness and operation security, Maria just doesn’t want those mental images. She always thought the military would be more professional and less like the hooligans she used to share the drunk tank with.

Ruby slides into the chair next to Qrow. “I heard you’re playing emergency tutor,” she says, tapping the textbooks Qrow has stacked on the table in front of him. Maria’s been working through them too, whenever Pietro doesn’t need her help and she wants an excuse to not sit alone with her thoughts.

(There’s something precious about the smile Qrow gives her when she seeks him out, something soft and surprised in the glances he throws her way, seeing if she’s left yet. Maria now knows his sister’s semblance, that he _has_ a sister, and if they ever meet she _will_ kill Raven Branwen, decades out of the field be damned. All it takes to make Qrow happy is to spend a few minutes at his side, to care enough to _look_ for him, and Raven won’t even do that.)

“You never did for me or Yang,” Ruby says, in answer to whatever Qrow said while Maria was fantasizing about murder.

“I absolutely would have,” Qrow protests, one finger raised. The pale lines from the rings he gave to Oscar have completely disappeared. “You just never needed it.”

“Uh-huh, and that’s why I almost had to retake logistics,” Ruby says.

Qrow grins, and it reminds Maria of the smile her mother broke out in on the frequent times Maria had to admit her mother was _right_. “That was different. That was a valuable life lesson about starting your final project the night before it’s due, and why you shouldn’t. Besides, your dad helped.”

Ruby rolls her eyes, but that’s not what she came to discuss. “Will you still have time to come with us tomorrow? Yang was very interested to know.”

“Yang bet your dad twenty lien she could get me to change my shirt and I know it.”

“It is older than _she_ is,” Ruby nods. “You really should think about it.”

“Hey now,” Qrow raises his hands. “With elections coming up, every vote counts! My shirt could be the difference between Hill and Schnee.”

“Your shirt is old enough but it hasn’t lived long enough in Atlas to establish residency,” Ruby points out, and Maria stifles her laughter, out of … respect for the librarian.

“Your dad’s never lost a wager before,” Qrow says, and though his face is straight there’s a smile in his eyes. “It’s about time Yang learned not to bet against him.”

“But who do you like more, Dad or Yang?” Ruby is all innocent sparkling eyes and sweet voice, like she doesn’t know exactly what she’s asking. Maria is not _entirely_ sure what she’s asking; Maria has long since given up how the girls and their uncle and the dad she hasn’t met work.

“That’s not fair,” Qrow protests, but mildly. “Alright. If anyone asked, it’s because I took Yang’s side against Tai. Nothing to do with James, got that?”

Ruby nods solemnly. “Okay. We won’t tell anyone you actually listened to General Ironwood before you froze to death. If you get something you won’t freeze to death in.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Qrow says. “I’m proud of you.”

They shake hands, and then Qrow pulls her in for a hug. Ruby whispers something Maria doesn’t catch but it makes Qrow close his eyes briefly, hug her tighter.

Ruby doesn’t stand up when he lets go, though, traces circles on the tabletop with her finger. “Do you think _he’ll_ let us enroll next semester?” Ruby doesn’t have to specify who she means.

Qrow puts his hand on top of hers, and Maria can see how gently he squeezes it. She kind of wants to leave, but there’s no way to do it without interrupting and she also _likes_ seeing Qrow like this. He’s so _content_ , like his natural state is guiding teenagers to adulthood with humor and hard-earned wisdom and unshakable faith in their capabilities. Makes sense, since he’s been stuck in that transition for about, oh, twenty years. 

“I still want to be a huntress,” Ruby says.

Qrow shakes his head. “Do you _want_ to enroll?”

Ruby slumps the tiniest bit. “No, not really.” Maria gets it. Just what she’s personally witnessed Ruby alone do is more than most will. Ruby and her friends enrolling in Atlas Academy would be like Pietro going back to high school shop class. “But if it’s what I need to do to be a huntress, it won’t be so bad.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Qrow promises. “At least make sure you don’t have to start over. I should be able to call in a few favors for that.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Ruby says, naked horror on her face.

Qrow laughs. “Kiddo, I’ve saved the man from Nevermores and Glynda more than once. He’ll bend the rules for me.”

Ruby shakes her head. “He wouldn’t make us _start over_ , would he?”

“Do you have transcripts?” Qrow asks dryly, and when Ruby shakes her head again, he says, “He _really_ likes to have all the paperwork filled out properly.” But Qrow’s smiling when he adds, “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s _Jimmy_. He’ll let me write up your transcripts, and I’m sure he’ll find a way to give you credit for all the stuff you guys did on Anima too. We’ll just have to get creative about _what_ it would count towards, exactly.”

Ruby nods but she doesn’t look too convinced. “Anyways, if you see Maria, ask her if she wants to come too,” and only then does Maria realize she is effectively hidden behind the books. She should have realized earlier, since Ruby was raised with manners.

“I will,” Qrow promises, and even waits until Ruby walks away to look over at Maria and ask, eyes twinkling, “What are you doing tomorrow? The kids and I are going to town. Would you like to come with us?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now I want y'all to imagine Qrow going, "hey Jimmy, gimme the paperwork so I can get the kids enrolled for next semester," and Ironwood frowning because enroll? Team RWBY and JNR? He wants to _hire_ them! He's filling out the forms right now!


	11. y lo dejas volar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and the world goes on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the first: Thank you Aerie and Kath for the betaing, the Spanish, and letting me occasionally burst through the metaphorical door in the middle of your night to yell about my demonic coatrack lust.
> 
> Note the second: I can't believe this took me so long to finish, I started this in literal AUGUST. 
> 
> Note the third: Miles gave Qrow the gay pirate outfit in episode three _specifically_ to joss my theory that he could only turn into a crow in those specific clothes. Then he didn't go beastmode for an entire season, solely because they enjoy watching my head explode. 
> 
> Note the last: that is, of course, sarcasm.

It turns out that all _ten_ of them are on this trip, including Oscar who was smart enough to buy winter clothes in Argus _before_ they arrived in the coldest fucking city on the planet. He offers his arm on a particularly nasty stretch of road, because he too was raised with manners.

Maria still doesn’t let him help her. It feels right, in the moment, to turn him down, to reject the implication that she isn’t up to his level. Instinct more than reason, to remind him that Ozpin or not, he’s still just a kid, shouldn’t get any ideas about… 

It’s not that she’s _better_ than him. Just she doesn’t want him to try to help someone, get in over his head, make the whole thing worse and then have to rescue him and someone else. He needs to know his… Not his _place_ , not like the rest of Atlas thinks of places. His role, perhaps.

She’s been up in Atlas too long if it takes her this long to come up with the word _strength_. Oscar needs to know his own strength, and the rest of them need to know it too, because he is young and half-trained and too precious to lose. The lamp could be recovered, Ozpin _will_ reincarnate, but Oscar himself is irreplaceable. She should still be taking care of him, not the other way around.

Then Qrow offers her his arm, and she takes it for Qrow’s sake, and Oscar’s smile is something ancient and affectionate, and for just a heartbeat she swears she glimpses Ozpin in his green-orange eyes.

“This is not the only store in Atlas,” Weiss reminds them once they’re through the doors. She’s taken point today since this is her home turf. But the store is large, wide selection and affordable prices, and the kids scatter almost as soon as the words are out of her mouth.

Qrow prowls the wide center aisles, where all the kids can still see him, and Maria might be imagining it but his hand looks to twitch towards Oscar. They’re not the only ones in the store, of course, small children disappearing around corners and their mothers’ despair. One counts four blond heads the way Qrow counts his chicks.

Blake _is_ the only Faunus in the store and Weiss does not leave her side.

Seven kids make for an impressive pile of silly-looking clothes and far too many belts. Qrow insists on paying, and when Weiss opens her mouth to protest, Ruby whispers something in her ear. Then _Nora_ asks if Ironwood gave him the money and nope, Maria’s not sticking around to find out.

She finds Oscar by the gumball machines, watching one spin around and around down the tube. “We’re going to another store,” he says. “None of the boots here have enough slide.” He makes finger-quotes before bending over to retrieve his gumball.

“I heard,” Maria says. She _was_ standing right there and she’s not _that_ hard of hearing.

“Okay, I didn’t know because you seemed distracted. By someone.” Does Oscar do this to _everybody_? According to what the others have told her, _yes_ , including in the middle of battle when large angry men are trying to kill him. And it’s fair, she wasn’t paying too much attention to the kids’ fashion show.

Maria is not defenseless, though. “What can I say? Qrow has a _fantastic_ ass.”

“ _Is_ a fantastic ass, you mean,” Oscar mutters without missing a beat. Maria loves him. "Sometimes."

Then the others descend upon them, Nora all but collaring Oscar as they make their way out the door. Qrow pauses in the vestibule, offers his arm to her before they go back out into the ice and the cold.

Maria takes it.

After two more stores, Yang calls Qrow out on not even _looking_ at the shirts like he promised. Then _Ruby_ calls him out for just grabbing the first one that comes to hand.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asks. “I think it’s hilarious.”

“It’s a snowman committing suicide with a hair dryer,” Blake points out.

“You’ve never worn a t-shirt in your life,” Yang adds.

“It’s blue,” Ruby says. “You hate blue more than that Sarge guy from Dad’s show.”

“And you’ll freeze in it,” Weiss finishes.

The look on Qrow’s face makes Maria wish for a camera. It’s almost identical to the one when they decided to steal an airship, only somehow more betrayed.

“Layers,” Jaune says decisively, and Ren nods. “Weiss, Blake, the vests are over there. Ruby, Nora, shirts. Yang, make sure he doesn’t get away.” Yang’s hand immediately locks around Qrow’s arm, Ruby and Nora take off in a blur of pink and red.

Blake looks Qrow up and down. “We’ll find something that can take a cape,” she promises before they go, taking Oscar with them.

Qrow looks at Maria, bewildered and just a bit afraid. Maria grins up at him. “You were given _ample_ opportunity,” she reminds him.

Jaune leads them towards a display of men’s undershirts. “Start with the larges,” Yang says, gesturing to Qrow’s shoulders. “He’s great on a sewing machine, he can take the bottom in if he needs to.”

“Somehow I am not surprised,” Maria murmurs. “And yet.” She pokes a finger through a hole in his ragged cape.

“Tragic backstory?” Qrow offers in feeble defense. It’s a lie, she knows all his tells by now and there’s nothing hiding behind his steady gaze, but it’s not worth calling him out.

Ren holds up three shirts that look identical to Maria. Qrow nods at one and Yang rolls her eyes. “At least touch it before you buy it, because I’m going to burn the one you have on and you’re going to be wearing it for, at a guess, the _next_ twenty years.”

“You sound just like your mother sometimes,” Qrow grumbles under his breath.

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

“I meant _Summer_.”

Yang turns absolutely _rosy_ with pride at that, but she will not be distracted. “Then you know I’m right.”

Ren stays standing patiently, and Jaune returns with _three more_ shirts. One is discarded for having too-bulky seams, two for not being stretchy enough, one for being a grey too close to blue, one for having too high a neck which, in bird culture, apparently means “covering his clavicle.” Maria’s a great fan of Qrow’s exposed collarbone but that’s not a high neckline by any measure.

The last one, Qrow just says no. Jaune asks what’s wrong with it like he cares, not exasperated at all even though Maria’s ready to strangle him, doubly so when Qrow shrugs in answer. Nora and Ruby returned in the middle with a grey shirt Qrow _did_ approve of, embroidery on the sleeves he’s currently running the fingers of his free hand over. Yang still hasn’t let go of him.

“We can go to another store,” Ruby says.

“You kids are done though,” he says. “Go back to the dorms without me, I promise I’ll get one.”

“But we’re doing this _together_ , Uncle Qrow,” she protests. ( _Grackle_ , Oscar says in Maria’s memories.) “You’re still with us, right?”

“Qrow,” Maria says, failing to keep her impatience out of her voice. “If you make me listen to another one of her speeches over a _shirt_ , you’ll be sleeping on the couch for a _week_.” She’ll figure out a way to make that happen. Yang will probably help, if she asks.

“Cotton,” Qrow sighs, defeated. “Do they have any cotton ones? Not weird nanoplastic, not random itchy other plants, just regular cotton?”

“We’ll find one,” Yang promises. “There has to be one in the city _somewhere_ if not this store.”

“None of those were acceptable, we’re going to a different store either way,” Weiss announces as she and Blake return. She looks from Qrow to Ruby, down to the shirt Ruby picked out, then sighs. “We’ll start at Warm Subject. What else do we need?”

“Where’s Oscar?” Qrow asks.

“He said he wants to meet you by the jewelry.” Blake shrugs. “Didn’t say why. Can we get some food before we go on? This isn’t the kind of decision to make while hungry, if you really are going to be wearing it until you die.”

“He probably will,” Yang says, letting her uncle go. “You want to show them the picture?”

Instead of producing this picture, Qrow takes advantage of his freedom to make a tactical retreat. “You guys figure out food, I’ll go find Oscar.” Maria follows him, half to admire his rear. Half because she’s not sure what Oscar wants but knowing the two of them it’ll be great.

Oscar’s waiting for him by the jewelry counter, and when he says “Qrow,” Maria figures she’ll stay between the racks where Oscar can’t see her and she can eavesdrop properly. If Oscar wanted privacy, he wouldn’t be having this conversation in public.

“What’s up, farmboy?” Qrow leans his hip against the counter next to him, doesn’t say anything about _finally_ being addressed by name. It’d bothered him so badly, like Oscar had somehow known exactly where to stick the knife and twist. Like Oscar had inside information. Ruby, Yang, or Ozpin?

“You promised to protect me.” Oscar is standing very straight, one hand behind his back, the other knocking on the glass of the counter. “And then you gave me your rings.”

“Yeah…” Qrow trails off, hands in his pockets. Maria’s seen him face grimm and giant robots and the best Atlas has to offer and _nothing_ manages to make him afraid as these teenagers do.

“I was thinking, it might be easier if you had new ones.” There’s forgiveness in Oscar’s voice; the scar remains but the wound has healed, tested and still strong. Maria wonders how much of it has to do with Qrow’s still-fragile sobriety, eight days strong, how much of it is hope. How much of it has to do with Qrow absently looking for three silver rings in the morning, with the shame in his eyes when he remembers where they are.

“It would,” Qrow says, turning away from Oscar’s eyes too-bright to look directly at, leaning over the glass case full of men’s rings, some with edges sharp enough to cut, some heavy enough to break the delicate bones of a face. “What do you think of this one?”

* * *

Maria doesn’t intend for every time Qrow’s tethered to her bed to turn into scar-worship but he’s got just so many. Part of it is his skin, quirk of genetics making it quick to tear and slow to heal. Part of it is his semblance, ripping the wounds open again and again, making them heal twisted and thick. Part of it is his own choices, cutting himself accidentally on glass broken when drunk, counting his own blood on the ground more than fair price to pay for someone else’s safety.

Tomorrow is their first mission since they arrived at the academy, and Maria wonders how many he’ll come back with. He could come back, whole and smiling, nothing worse than wind-chapped lips under her thumb.

If he comes back.

Anything can happen on a mission, she knows damn well. _Every_ hunt is dangerous. And while she trusts he’ll not take stupid risks if he doesn’t have to, that he’ll do his best to come home in one piece… everyone has bad luck from time to time.

Qrow hasn’t had a drink in ten days, his aura not dampened by alcohol. His semblance not weakened by poison.

They did find clothes he’d accept in the end, so at least he won’t freeze even if he rolled the sleeve up, refuses to roll them back down. He’s tight-lipped about what, exactly, the dust in his cape’s seams does, but it’s firmly attached to his new shirt. They’re going with the Ace Ops, Ironwood’s handpicked team, and he’s the second-greatest huntsman she’s ever met. Not as good as she was, of course, but she’s retired so maybe he _is_ number one now. He’s as safe as any huntsman will ever get.

Maria knows just how little that is. How much safer he is here, on her bed, leather jesses around his wrists keeping him from wandering off to do something stupid and get hurt. Qrow is warm and soft and open under her hands, and it’s not just his body that’s started to heal from decades of neglect, from the trauma of withdrawal not even she was allowed to witness.

He’s sunk deep, too, as she traces the last unscarred skin with her mouth, wonders which part will end up bloody and bandaged even as she flexes her fingers inside him to hear that sound dripping sweet and thick from his mouth. So deep he can barely keep his eyes open, can’t form words at all, and she is so careful with him like she now knows nobody ever has been, watches him like a wild thing with only the ancient language of steady breath and smooth brow.

Tomorrow she will have to let him fly free, a bird hunting, and pray that she’s given him reason enough to come back. Tomorrow, he will disappear from her sight over the horizon, off to danger too far away for her to reach, and she will wait for him to return.

But that is tomorrow, and tonight Maria will hold him close, hold him safe, remind him that she will take care of him even as he cries out and fills her.

* * *

Maria finds Qrow on the stairs, the first morning, his first mission, and for the first time in many days she is afraid.

He is too by the way he’s pacing, touching his pockets, spinning his largest new ring around his finger. His hands flexing, reaching for a flask that is not there. There are no pockets big enough for his flask in his new clothes. Even if there were, it’s up in Ironwood’s office, tucked in his desk, next to Ironwood’s own round silver flask, a promise unasked for and unspoken and enough to make Maria forgive the General all the same.

“I can’t do this,” Qrow mutters, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I should stay home.” He stops pacing in front of her and his eyes are very red and raw when he says, “I’ll just drag them down.”

“No porque la riegues eres un inútil,” Maria sighs, reaches up and pulls him down, down to her level, his forehead pressed against hers and her hands tight in his hair. If he doesn’t understand her words he can’t argue. “Eres un _pendejo_ , mi corazón. Estamos consciente de ello, y aún así te queremos.”

Then she kisses him, as much blessing and benediction as he’ll take, everything she can send with him, everything back here waiting for him. And when she lets him go, she doesn’t push him away, lets him be the one to step back. She cannot make him return to her. She cannot make him leave her. She can only let him choose, and let him know he will not be alone.

Qrow walks away, with his children, with who may be new friends, and Maria watches their backs for what seems a very long time.

“Señora,” Oscar says, cool and calm as his hand is warm on her arm. “Will you stay with me until they come back? Teach me to play poker?”

She looks at him,and he looks back with innocent clever eyes, and she smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all, folks!  
> Spanish used:  
> No porque la riegues eres un inútil: your fuckups do not make you a fuckup.  
> Eres un pendejo, mi corazón. Estamos consciente de ello, y aún así te queremos: You're an asshole, my heart. We all know this, and we love you anyways.
> 
> There will be one final meme dump. As soon as I get it uploaded.

**Author's Note:**

> [Meme dump!](https://imgur.com/a/Gya9vgj)
> 
> Thank you for reading


End file.
